Bradley Cooper Directing and Starring in a Leonard Bernstein Biopic, Matt Bomer Joins Cast
Bradley Cooper has set his next directing project after the critical and financial success of A Star is Born back in 2018.
Cooper himself confirmed that he would be directing Maestro, a Leonard Bernstein biopic, last month, during a conversation with Mahershala Ali in an episode of Variety’s Actors on Actors. Filming is set to begin in May, so a 2023 release date is more than likely. Carey Mulligan will be playing Bernstein’s wife, Felicia. Deadline has just learned that Matt Bomer is also in negotiations to join the cast. Variety confirmed the news, adding that Bomer will play a clarinet player who had an affair with Bernstein.
Bradley Cooper co-wrote the script with Spotlight screenwriter Josh Singer, and will also executive produce the film. Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Kristie Macosko Krieger, Fred Berner, and Amy Durning are producing. In fact, Spielberg was, for many years, supposed to do a Bernstein biopic, but eventually, he handed over the project to Cooper. The actor-turned-director said the following about the transition during the aforementioned conversation:
“I [told Spielberg], ‘I always felt like I could play a conductor, but may I research the material and see if I can write it and direct it? Would you let me do that?. Steven has a lot of interests — he’ll just choose one thing and all of the other things will be on hold. I think he knew he wasn’t going to make that movie for a while. He was kind enough to hand it off to me, and that’s what I’ve been doing for the last four and a half years, and we start shooting in May.”
It all worked out in the end, as Spielberg also had the chance to direct his own love letter to Leonard Bernstein — the most recent West Side Story, which credits Bernstein as the sole composer of the music (rightfully so, he composed the musical back in the 1950s, with Stephen Sondheim writing it).
Maestro will span over 30 years, covering most aspects of Bernstein’s life. While he was married and had three children with his wife Felicia, after he passed away, she confessed that he was homosexual and had had multiple relationships with men. However, the film will mostly focus on his legendary career as a conductor. From Deadline:
The drama spans over 30 years. Bernstein’s career is enough to fill a miniseries: his conducting debut at the New York Philharmonic at 25 when the conductor took ill; without even rehearsing, Bernstein did so well his star was launched the next day when his feat made the front page of The New York Times. He was blacklisted before being cleared of being a communist just before he composed the Oscar-nominated score for On the Waterfront; and he was an activist in the civil rights movement, and outspoken on issues including ending the Vietnam War. But the through line for the movie is the beautifully complex story of the marriage between Bernstein and his wife.
Bomer has had a long career in television, but he may be finally making the jump to the big screen. He was a cast member in both Magic Mike films, and last year he played a role in Netflix’s The Boys in the Band. On the television side, he played the lead role in Fox’s White Collar and voices Negative Man in HBO Max’s Doom Patrol.
Netflix will distribute the film worldwide.
Miguel Fernández is a Spanish student that has movies as his second passion in life. His favorite movie of all time is The Lord of the Rings, but he is also a huge Star Wars fan. However, fantasy movies are not his only cup of tea, as authors like Scorsese, Fincher, Kubrick or Hitchcock have been an obsession for him since he started to understand the language of filmmaking. He is that guy who will watch a black and white movie, just because it is in black and white.
