The first trailer for director Ridley Scott’s House of Gucci has arrived to dazzle us with the sheer volume of Academy Award winners and nominees who have been gathered together to bring this intense true story to life. Starring the likes of Lady Gaga, Adam Driver, Jared Leto, Al Pacino, Jeremy Irons, and Salma Hayek, House of Gucci is part-biography, part-crime thriller and sure to light up the next awards season.
Directed by Ridley Scott, and based on the 2001 book The House of Gucci: A Sensational Story of Murder, Madness, Glamour, and Greed by Sara Gay Forden, House of Gucci is inspired by the shocking true story of the family empire behind the Italian fashion house of Gucci. Spanning three decades of love, betrayal, decadence, revenge, and ultimately murder, we see what a name means, what it’s worth, and how far a family will go for control.
The trailer quickly drops us into this world of glamour and wealth, with each character draped in the most fashionable finery. The cast is so ludicrously stellar that no doubt House of Gucci will be chock-full of standout performances, each competing to be everyone’s favorite. The most eye-catching so far has to be Jared Leto as Paolo Gucci, with the actor rendered unrecognizable thanks to some impressive makeup and prosthetics. So far, it looks like it won’t just be the performances vying for awards.
House of Gucci sees Lady Gaga return to the big screen for the first time since her Oscar nominated performance in Bradley Cooper’s Awards-darling A Star is Born back in 2018. The movie finds the singer and actress starring as Patrizia Reggiani, the ex-wife of Maurizio Gucci (Adam Driver), who was tried and convicted of orchestrating the fashion icon’s assassination on the steps of his office in 1995. The trial quickly became a media sensation, revealing that after 12 years of marriage and two children, Gucci had decided to leave Reggiani for another woman.
During this time, Patrizia Reggiani was diagnosed with a brain tumor, which her children blamed for her actions and assassination plan. Reggiani was dubbed the “Black Widow” by the press and was sentenced to 29 years, although her sentence was reduced after a successful appeal on the grounds that her brain tumor had affected her behavior. Reggiani went on to serve 18 years in jail before being let out in 2016.
The real-life events behind House of Gucci are controversial to say the least, with the upcoming adaptation having already been poorly received by Patrizia Gucci, one of Maurizio Gucci’s second cousins, who has since publicly complained that Ridley Scott’s version of events are far from being true to life. “We are truly disappointed,” she told The Associated Press earlier this year. “I speak on behalf of the family. (The filmmakers) are stealing the identity of a family to make a profit, to increase the income of the Hollywood system.”
“Our family has an identity, privacy,” she continued. “We can talk about everything, but there is a borderline that cannot be crossed.” House of Gucci is scheduled to be released on November 24, 2021.