Angelina Jolie portrays opera singer Maria Callas in official 'Maria' teaser: Watch here
The official teaser for Angelina Jolie's upcoming film, "Maria," has arrived.
The highly anticipated film stars Jolie as opera singer Maria Callas and will follow Callas' story near the end of her life, according to a synopsis.
In the beginning of the teaser, Jolie walks out on a stage in a grand, empty theater. She's asked by a pianist what she wants to sing and several clips of Jolie as Callas follow from past performances, as well as several clips that paint a portrait of Callas' life.
The teaser ends by cutting back to Jolie as Callas, who responds to the pianist, "Not today," before walking off the stage.
According to the synopsis, the film is "a story about a woman that lived from the '20s to '70s, a woman who burned her voice, her life, by doing (what she loved) her work."
"Maria Callas was famous for her incredible voice -- the film looks at a period in her life when she had lost her voice and tries to regain it," the synopsis continues. "The film is about someone who, after dedicating her life to audiences around the world that would listen to her, decides to finally find her voice, her own identity, and finally do something for herself."
"Maria" is Jolie's first film since she starred in Chloé Zhao's "Eternals" in 2021. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter in August, Jolie said she identified with Callas' story because of how it overlapped with her own.
"I'm sure there's a lot that will be read into it of our overlaps as women, but the one that's maybe not the most obvious is I'm not sure how comfortable we both are with being public," she said.
"And yet I do love to create, she does love to sing, but sometimes there are all these other things that take that joy away and change the experience of that," Jolie continued. "It was quite hard, what she went through. People were quite aggressive when she wasn't able to be what they wanted her to be. They were very unkind, and she carried a lot of trauma, and she worked very, very hard. I just began to really care about her and wanted that aspect of the story to be told."
Academy Award nominee Steven Knight, whose work includes "Spencer" and "Peaky Blinders," wrote the script, while Pablo Larraín ("El Conde," "Spencer" and "Jackie") directed.
In a statement shared by Netflix, Larraín called "Maria" his "most personal work yet."
"It is a creative imagining and psychological portrait of Maria Callas who, after dedicating her life to performing for audiences around the world, decides finally to find her own voice, her own identity, and sing for herself," he said. "I'm deeply honored to tell this story and share it with audiences worldwide like Maria did with her life."
"Maria" will arrive in select theaters in November and will be available to stream on Netflix starting Dec. 11.
