After the success of A Star is Born, Bradley Cooper is returning to the director’s chair with another musical film, Maestro, based on the life of conductor Leonard Bernstein. Cooper, of course, stars as Bernstein in the biographical romance following the life of the acclaimed composer with a focus on his complicated 25-year marriage to Felicia Montealegre.
In the first trailer for Netflix’s awards-bait film, Carey Mulligan plays Montealegre, who is wildly in love with Bernstein even as she is aware of his multiple affairs with both men and women. Maya Hawke plays the couple’s daughter, Jamie, and Sam Nivola plays their son. The cast is rounded out by Matt Bomer, Sarah Silverman, Gideon Glick, Gabe Fazio, Eric Parkinson, William Hill, Nick Blaemire, Oscar Pavlo, Tim Rogan and Mallory Portnoy.
Aside from his numerous namechecks in last year’s big conduct movie, Tár, Bernstein is perhaps best known for his score to Broadway’s West Side Story and the Marlon Brandon classic film On The Waterfront. Bernstein married Montealegre in 1951, and the New York and Connecticut-based pair had three children together. Over the course of three decades, they had a tumultuous marriage, even separating for a year, though they ultimately were together until Felicia’s death in 1978.
Cooper wrote the Maestro script with Oscar-winning Spotlight writer Josh Singer. The film will premiere at the Venice Film Festival before releasing in theaters on November 22nd, and will then stream on Netflix starting December 20th. Watch the first trailer for Maestro, below: