Netflix has dropped the first trailer for Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, the last film Chadwick Boseman worked on before his death in August.
"This would be an empty world without the blues," Viola Davis' Ma Rainey announces as the trailer opens. "I try and take that emptiness and fill it up with something. If they want to call me the Mother of Blues, that's alright with me! It don't hurt none." From there, it picks up with Boseman's Levee, an up-and-coming trumpeter who runs into harsh reality as his star begins to rise.
Adapted from August Wilson's 1984 play of the same name, the film explores racial tensions in the music industry during the 1920s and centers on the life of the Mother of Blues, Ma Rainey and her experience with the white management that dominated the music industry. Boseman plays an ambitious trumpet player who attempts to make his own mark on the industry by putting a more modern spin on Ma's songs.
Ma Rainey's Black Bottom was adapted by Ruben Santiago-Hudson and produced by Todd Black and Denzel Washington. Washington played a major role early in Boseman's life and helped pay for the actor's summer theater program at the University of Oxford.
Directed by George C. Wolfe and based on a play of the same name by August Wilson, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom stars Viola Davis, Chadwick Boseman, Glynn Turman, Taylour Paige and Michael Potts. The film arrives on Netflix Dec. 18.