Blood is a Chord in First Trailer for Malcom Washington’s ‘The Piano Lesson’

Netflix today released the first trailer for Malcolm Washington’s The Piano Lesson, the latest of August Wilson’s award-winning plays to be brought to the screen by the director’s father, two-time Oscar winner Denzel Washington.

Adapted from August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning work, The Piano Lesson explores the intergenerational dynamics of identity, resilience and transcendence and revealing startling truths about how we perceive the past and who gets to define a legacy. 

As a battle is brewing in the Charles Household, at the center stands a prized heirloom piano tearing two siblings apart. On one side, a brother (John David Washington) plans to build the family fortune by selling it. On the other, a sister (Danielle Deadwyler) will go to any lengths to hold onto the sole vestige of the family’s heritage. Their uncle (Samuel L. Jackson, reprising his Tony-nominated role) tries to mediate,  but even he can’t hold back the ghosts of the past.

The film is co-written by Virgil Williams and Malcolm Washington, produced by Denzel Washington and Todd Black (Fences, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom), and executive produced by Jennifer Roth, Constanza Romero Wilson, and Katia Washington. Co-starring Ray Fisher, Michael Potts, Erykah Badu, Skylar Aleece Smith, Jerrika Hinton, Gail Bean and Corey Hawkins.

Among the crew behind the camera is director of photography Michael Gioulakis, ASC (It Follows, Us), production designer David J. Bomba (Walk the Line, Mudbound), editor Leslie Jones (The Master, The Thin Red Line), costume designer Francine Jamison-Tanchuck (One Night in Miami, The Color Purple) and two-time Oscar-winning composer Alexandre Desplat (The Grand Budapest Hotel, The Shape of Water).

After a festival run, including the Toronto International Film Festival, The Piano Lesson will be released in select theaters in November 8 and on Netflix November 22. Here is the trailer.

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Erik Anderson

Erik Anderson is the founder/owner and Editor-in-Chief of AwardsWatch and has always loved all things Oscar, having watched the Academy Awards since he was in single digits; making lists, rankings and predictions throughout the show. This led him down the path to obsessing about awards. Much later, he found himself in film school and the film forums of GoldDerby, and then migrated over to the former Oscarwatch (now AwardsDaily), before breaking off to create AwardsWatch in 2013.

He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Hollywood Critics Association (HCA) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.

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