Every few years, HBO manages to rope Al Pacino in for a prestige project where he plays a famous guy, typically one with some troubles with the law. There was Jack Kevorkian in 2010, Phil Spector in 2013, and, now, the network has debuted the first trailer for Pacino’s performance in Paterno, about legendary Penn State football coach Joe Paterno, and the sexual abuse scandal that ultimately brought him down.
Unsurprisingly, director Barry Levinson’s camera stays locked on Pacino’s hangdog face for most of the trailer’s run-time, while we cut to shots of his various heroes’ welcomes, people being freaked out, and one very unsettling glimpse of what appears to be convicted sex offender Jerry Sandusky. All of which ends in the question that ultimately haunted, and then swiftly ended, the real-life Paterno’s career, and which provokes some top-notch eye-acting from Pacino: “Did you know about Jerry?” We’ll presumably get an answer when the film debuts this spring.