In 2018, Bradley Cooper went from being a great actor with tremendous range to a budding filmmaker with a knack for storytelling and impressive visual style with A Star is Born. Five years later, he’s preparing to release his second directorial effort, the Leonard Bernstein biopic titled Maestro, a swirling and sprawling chronicle of the late conductor’s life and career.
That being said, there’s a lot you’ll probably want to know about the biographical drama before it arrives on Netflix and potentially takes over end-of-the-year conversations. But don’t worry, because we’re about to break down everything we know about Maestro including its release date, offer a look at its trailer, and go into other details about the long-in-the-works project…
What Is The Maestro Release Date?
Anyone with a Netflix subscription will be able to watch Maestro when the film debuts on December 20, 2023, according to the streaming service. However, audiences in select cities will be able to check out the movie a little less than a month earlier when its brief theatrical engagement kicks off on November 22nd, a busy day that also includes the arrival of highly anticipated movies like Wish, The Holdovers, and Ridley Scott’s Napoleon starring Joaquin Phoenix.
The 2023 Netflix movie will have steep competition when it comes to the Best Picture category, the Best Director and Best Actor races at the various awards shows early next year.
Bradley Cooper And Carey Mulligan Lead The Maestro Cast
When Maestro debuts this fall it will feature an outstanding group of actors, with Bradley Cooper and Carey Mulligan sitting atop the cast list. In the upcoming movie, Cooper will take on the role of decorated conductor and humanitarian Leonard Bernstein, while Mulligan will portray his longtime wife and partner Felicia Montealegre Cohn Bernstein.
Other members of the Maestro cast include Maya Hawke as Leonard’s daughter, Jamie Bernstein, according to The Hollywood Reporter, Sarah Silverman as his sister, per Deadline, and Matt Bomer as one of the composer’s male lovers, Variety has reported. Josh Hamilton, Scott Ellis, Gideon Glick, Sam Nivola, Alexa Swinton, and Miriam Shor are also set to appear, Netflix has announced.
The Maestro Trailer Teases Decades Of Romance, Heartbreak, And Beautiful Music
After hearing about the movie for the past couple of years, the world finally got a look at the upcoming biographical drama when Netflix released the first Maestro trailer in August 2023. The short teaser, which primarily focused on the relationship shared by Leonard Bernstein and wife Felicia Montealegre, charted multiple decades with glimpses into the romance, heartbreak, and beautiful music created by the award-winning composer and conductor. Though it didn’t offer a beat-by-beat breakdown of the plot, the brief video did highlight what’s to come.
The Maestro trailer also showed how much Bradley Cooper completely changed his appearance in order to properly portray Bernstein, a look that has since been criticized online but supported by the late composer’s children, who compared the backlash to how their father was treated years earlier.
Maestro Chronicles Leonard Bernstein’s Life And Career, Primarily His Marriage With Felicia Montealegre Cohn Bernstein
In the film’s official logline, Netflix described Maestro as a towering and fearless love story that chronicles the life and career of Leonard Bernstein with a major focus put on his marriage with Felicia Montealegre Cohn Bernstein to whom he was married from 1951 until her death in 1978.
Though the specifics of Bernstein’s various extramarital affairs, and how they will be treated in the movie, have not been fully disclosed at this time, the couple had a contentious and at times rocky relationship, as detailed in a letter from Felicia to Leonard (via the U.S. Library of Congress) in which she wrote about his homosexuality and its effect on their marriage. Going off the scenes in the teaser trailer, Maestro looks to tackle that part of their relationship head-on.
Bradley Cooper Has Said He Earned The Director Role After Showing A Star Is Born To Steven Spielberg
Early in Maestro’s development, Steven Spielberg was going to helm the project and Bradley Cooper was just going to be playing Leonard Bernstein instead of pulling double duty. That all changed when the star and director of A Star is Born invited the legendary filmmaker to a screening of his directorial debut in hopes that Spielberg would be willing to pass the baton to him instead.
During a January 2022 appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert Cooper talked about how Spielberg approached him to star in the movie after hearing that he was obsessed with being a conductor as a child. But during the middle of the early screening, he began to freak out when the iconic filmmaker got out of his seat:
It’s the scene where Jackson calls Ally up on the stage. It’s the biggest scene in the movie, and I’m sitting there, and right as she is just going onto the stage, he gets up. I thought he was going to the bathroom now and that’s it, it’s over. … He walks over, and I’m putting my head down, and the next thing, I feel his face, and he said, ‘You’re [BLEEPING] directing Maestro,’ and then he sat back down.
A few months after telling Colbert the story, Cooper was not only starring in Maestro, he was also directing what could be described as a passion project for the Hollywood star.
The Movie Is Being Produced By Martin Scorsese And Steven Spielberg
Though Steven Spielberg won’t be the one directing Maestro, he did serve as one of the film’s producers alongside another legendary filmmaker, Martin Scorsese. In May 2018, when reporting that Bradley Cooper would be the one helming the project, Deadline also revealed that Spielberg and Scorsese would join a list of producers that also included Fred Berner, Amy Durning, and Kristie Macosko Krieger working together to make the project a reality. At one point, Scorsese himself was interested in directing Maestro but ultimately ended up making The Irishman, another Netflix project, instead.
Expect to see and hear a lot more about Maestro as we get closer to the film’s brief theatrical rollout in November and streaming debut in December. In the meantime, check out our breakdown of what’s left of the 2023 movie schedule so you don’t miss any of those highly anticipated films when they come to a theater (or streaming service) near you.
