A BC theater’s Spider-Man poster never showed up, so an employee drew one by hand
People love the hand drawn Spider-Man: Brand New Day poster
Spider-Man: Brand New Day has made $1.67 billion worldwide, but the version of it everyone’s sharing right now cost about a dollar in marker. When a BC theater’s official posters never arrived, an employee drew his own, and it beat the real thing.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day has made $1.67 billion worldwide. The most beloved piece of marketing it’s produced cost about a dollar and a marker.
At the Famous Players 6 in Prince George, British Columbia, the official promotional posters for the movie never showed up in time for release. Rather than leave an empty frame in the lobby, an employee, identified online as Drake Landon, grabbed a marker and drew his own Spider-Man.
Underneath it, a handwritten apology: “Sorry! We never received the real posters! Sorry for any inconveniences!”
Why the hand-drawn Spider-Man poster went viral
The drawing is, by any technical standard, not great. A lanky, slightly wobbly web-slinger in marker. That’s the entire appeal.
It started spreading when a father posted a photo of his son posing next to it in a Prince George community Facebook group, saying they’d stopped to appreciate the hand-drawn poster and gotten to meet the artist. From there it did what the good stuff on the internet still does. It took off on its own.
Landon’s own mother turned up in the comments to confirm it, writing that her son was excited to make the drawing when the posters didn’t arrive and that she was proud of him and the community’s response. The image jumped to Reddit, where a local shared it with a self-deprecating caption about the theater being too scuffed to get the real poster, and pulled thousands of upvotes.
People liked it better than the official poster
Here’s the part that turned a cute local story into something with a little more bite. A lot of people said, out loud, that they preferred the marker drawing to Sony’s actual campaign.
One commenter admitted she’d seen it a week earlier and assumed it was official studio art, then asked why it was better than the real poster. Someone dubbed it “friendly neighborhood marketing,” a nod to Spider-Man’s own tagline. Others said theaters should do this for every movie, and floated that Sony should send the kid some swag, or just pay him outright, for doing more organic promotion than a marketing budget could buy.
There’s a real argument buried in the jokes. A billion-dollar movie’s slickest official art got out-charmed by a theater employee with a marker, because the drawing has the one thing a studio campaign can’t manufacture: a person clearly made it, and clearly cared.
The comment that got to the heart of it
Of all the reactions, one landed hardest, and it says something about the moment we’re in.
Amid all the praise, the top-voted sentiment on the whole thing was blunt: “This over AI replacement any day.”
That’s the nerve this touched. In a stretch where studios and platforms are racing to automate art, where the conversation around every image is increasingly “was this AI,” a wonky human drawing of Spider-Man read as a small act of defiance. It’s imperfect in exactly the ways a machine isn’t. People didn’t just find it cute. They found it reassuring.
Whether Sony or Marvel ever sends Landon a thank-you card, the internet already handed him the better prize. His one-dollar poster out-traveled a global marketing campaign, and a whole lot of strangers looked at a lopsided marker Spider-Man and felt something real. As one Reddit user put it, unironically: they want the poster.
Not bad for a frame that was supposed to sit empty.
Article compiled with the help of the Pirates & Princesses newsroom.
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Hat Tips:
Fortress of Solitude (August 12, 2026), Jarrod Saunders’ reporting on the hand-drawn poster, the Famous Players 6 location, the artist’s identification, and the viral spread
r/marvelstudios and a Prince George community Facebook group (August 2026), the original poster photos and community reaction, engagement not independently verified
Deadline and Variety (August 2026), the $1.67 billion worldwide gross and Brand New Day’s box office standing