A24 revealed the first look – teaser trailer for Highest 2 Lowest, Spike Lee’s neo-noir crime thriller starring Denzel Washington. The film reimagines Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 classic High and Low, which itself loosely based on the 1959 novel King’s Ransom by Ed McBain; and transplants it into the modern music industry.

Set in New York City, the story follows a high-stakes kidnapping that forces a prominent music mogul to confront the price of his success and the limits of his conscience.

The film boasts a powerhouse cast led by Denzel Washington, marking his fifth collaboration with Lee after classics like Malcolm X and Inside Man. Joining him is A$AP Rocky as “Yung Felon,” rapper Ice Spice makes her acting debut, while Jeffrey Wright, Ilfenesh Hadera, and Dean Winters round out the ensemble.

Highest 2 Lowest will premiere out of competition at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival in May, with a U.S. theatrical release by A24 set for August 22, 2025, followed by streaming on Apple TV+ starting September 5, 2025.

According to the synopsis: When a titan music mogul (Denzel Washington), widely known as having the “best ears in the business”, is targeted with a ransom plot, he is jammed up in a life-or-death moral dilemma. Brothers Denzel Washington and Spike Lee reunite for the 5th in their long working relationship for a reinterpretation of the great filmmaker Akira Kurosawa’s crime thriller High and Low, now played out on the mean streets of modern day New York City.

Director Spike Lee emphasizes that Highest 2 Lowest is a “reinterpretation – not a remake” of Kurosawa’s original. He elaborates, “In the Kurosawa film, the central character is a shoemaker. In our interpretation, Denzel is a New York record executive, the best in the business.”

Watch the teaser trailer for Highest 2 Lowest.