‘Maestro’ Trailer Reveals the Love Story at the Heart of the Leonard Bernstein Biopic

After more than a decade, the story of Leonard Bernstein is coming to the screen. Maestro comes to select theaters next month and to Netflix in December. The official trailer for the film dropped yesterday.

The Maestro trailer gives viewers their first look at Bradley Cooper’s transformation into the famed conductor and composer. It also gives a brief look at the relationship at the center of the film. Watch it here.

Cooper didn’t just star in the movie. He also co-wrote and directed Maestro. However, he was far from the first director who planned to helm the project. Leonard Bernstein’s eldest daughter Jamie spoke to Vanity Fair about the film. In the interview, she revealed that Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg both signed on to direct at different times. Then, Spielberg passed the reins to Cooper.

“Bradley arrived at this concept that was really not a biopic anymore at all. It was something else entirely of its own devising—its own creature, really,” Jamie Bernstein said of Maestro.

Cooper chronicled the conductor’s career and success through the lens of his marriage to Felicia Montealegre Cohn Bernstein. “It became a portrait of a marriage,” Jamie Bernstein said. “It was a love story about our parents, and of course, what could be more personal for us?” She went on to say that the film is “very personal, very intimate, really about who [Bernstein] was as a human being.”

Cooper told Steven Colbert how he came to direct Maestro during an appearance on The Late Show. Spielberg reached out and asked him to consider playing the lead role. Then, Cooper read the script and told the director, “I just wrote and directed this movie and that’s really all I want to do. Are you really going to direct this?”

Spielberg admitted that he probably wasn’t going to helm the project. However, he wasn’t ready to just hand over the reins. So, Cooper invited him to a very early screening of A Star Is Born. At the time, he was still doing color correction on the film.

“It’s the scene where Jackson calls Ellie up on the stage. It’s like the biggest scene in the movie,” he recalled. At that point, as the female lead stepped onto the stage, Cooper saw Spielberg standing up. He was terrified, thinking that the iconic filmmaker was walking out of the screening at the film’s climax. However, that wasn’t the case.

Instead, Spielberg came over to him and leaned in close to be heard over the movie’s soundtrack. “You’re directing Maestro,” he said before returning to his seat.

Maestro comes to select theaters on November 22. It lands on Netflix on December 20.

Photo by Lee/Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty Images