I’m sorta kinda wondering why the New York Film Festival honchos didn’t select Bradley Cooper‘s Maestro (Netflix), the much anticipated Leonard Bernstein biopic costarring Cooper and Carey Mulligan, to fill one of their major gala slots.

The film will have its world premiere in early September at the Venice Film Festival, but it’s long been calculated or at least presumed that Maestro will have its U.S. debut at the NYFF’s Lincoln Center venue, Alice Tully Hall — right next door to where Bernstein often conducted.

Cooper, Todd Phillips, Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg are among the producers, which makes it feel like kind of a heavyweight deal. So why wasn’t Maestro chosen as the festival’s opening night, centerpiece or closing night attraction?

I’m presuming it’ll be announced later this month as a special premiere, but it all feels a tiny bit weird. It makes you wonder “what’s wrong with it?” Why are the NYFF programmers giving Cooper’s film the “sit down and wait in the lobby” treatment?”