MOVIE NEWS – The nine-time Oscar nominee returns to directing after his successful version of A Star Is Born. Carey Mulligan is his companion.

A Star Is Born was one of the most successful directorial debuts of the last decade. The fourth version of the classic grossed $430 million in theatres and received 8 Oscar nominations, including one in the Best Picture category. Bradley Cooper is already filming his long-awaited sophomore effort as director, Maestro, the biography of legendary composer Leonard Bernstein. Netflix has just shown the first images of its filming, and we are already counting down the days until its premiere.

The musician was the first American conductor to achieve world fame thanks to his work leading the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, his shows for young people on television between 1958 and 1972, and his compositions for the Broadway stage, including the legendary score for West Side Story  (in which he collaborated with the lyricist Stephen Sondheim) and The law of silence, his only original work for the cinema in his entire career. Bernstein was left at the gates of EGOT: he only lacked the Oscar that escaped him with his score for Elia Kazan’s masterpiece.

The level of names related to the project is simply sensational. Todd Phillips, Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg will be credited as producers. Phillips was his partner on the Hangover trilogy years before they produced  Joker together. Scorsese was going to direct the project until he decided to focus on realizing his lifelong dream, The Irishman. The next genius attached to Maestro was Spielberg, who decided to hand over the film’s reins to Cooper after being dazzled by his take on a classic like A Star Is Born.

Cooper himself co-wrote the script with Spotlight Oscar-winning screenwriter Josh Singer. Beside him will be Carey Mulligan ( A Promising Young Woman ) as Felicia Montealegre, the actress and his wife until her death; Jeremy Strong ( Succession ) as John Gruen, an art historian who studied his work; Maya Hawke ( Stranger Things ) as his daughter, Jamie Bernstein, and Matt Bomer ( White Collar ) in a character to be confirmed.

The film’s shooting started this May, a year later than planned. There is still more than a year before its foreseeable premiere on the festival circuit in the fall of 2023. Still, Netflix has decided to heat the atmosphere by publishing four behind-the-scenes images of one of its significant assets for the 2024 Oscars.

Cary Fukunaga ( Not Afraid to Die, True Detective ) would direct his own interpretation of Bernstein’s story with Jake Gyllenhaal in the lead. The American was left in no man’s land four years after Cooper and company convinced Bernstein’s estate to give them exclusive rights to his life and his songs.

The first images of the production confirm that Cooper will face a laborious and elegant characterization work to play the musician in the last years of his life. Bernstein died in New York in 1990 at the age of 72. Legend has it that on the day of his funeral, in the procession along the streets of Manhattan, the workers took off their helmets and paid their respects while singing the song Goodbye, Lenny. Three years before his death, the group REM referenced him in the lyrics of one of their biggest hits, and It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine).

After nine frustrating nominations, Maestro can finally be Bradley Cooper’s Oscar: four as an actor, four as a producer, and one as a screenwriter. Since his stunning performance on The Bright Side ten years ago, he has become one of the most trusted stars in the industry. In the last decade alone, he has worked with Clint Eastwood, Guillermo del Toro, Paul Thomas Anderson, David O. Russell, Derek Ciafrance, Susanne Biehr, Cameron Crowe and the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Netflix is ​​also waiting for its first Oscar for best picture. After  CODA  snatched the glory from  The Power of the Dog in the final stages of the race, everything indicates that its great asset for the 95th edition of the Oscars will be between  Blonde  (an atypical biopic of Marilyn Monroe with Ana de Armas),  The Good Nurse  (drama based on the “Angel of Death” story with Jessica Chastain and Eddie Redmayne), White Noise (adapted from Don DeLillo’s novel The Silence by Noah Baumbach) and  The Killer  (the back to David Fincher’s serial killer thriller).

From the set of Maestro pic.twitter.com/RFSZb1aX1i

— Netflix (@netflix) May 30, 2022