For his feature directorial debut, Malcolm Washington set his sights on adapting August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson, the fourth installment of the playwright’s American Century Cycle, Wilson’s magnum opus about the African American experience through the twentieth century. The film unfolds in 1930s Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania as two siblings must determine what to do with a fraught family heirloom: a piano carved with likenesses of their enslaved ancestors.   

John David Washington (Tenet) and Danielle Deadwyler (Till) star as sharecropper Boy Willie and his sister Berniece, whose clash unearths questions about how family legacy comes to be defined. Samuel L. Jackson — who originated the role of Boy Willie when the Pulitzer Prize-winning production debuted onstage in 1987 —  portrays their uncle, Doaker Charles.   

Nearly all the principals involved in the film have an extensive history with Wilson’s body of work: John David, Jackson, Michael Potts, and Ray Fisher reprise their roles from the 2022 Broadway revival of The Piano Lesson. And the powerful drama marks the third Wilson feature adaptation for producers Denzel Washington and Todd Black and executive producer Constanza Romero, as well as the second for executive producer Katia Washington.