The anticipation is growing for Steven Soderbergh’s Liberace biopic Behind The Candelabra, which is due to air on HBO in the US in May and should reach the UK shortly afterwards. Now THR has debuted a new pic from the film, which features Michael Douglas and Matt Damon.

Although we’ve seen a couple of pics promoting the film before (taken from an HBO promo video), this is billed as the first official image.

The film concentrates on the flamboyant pianist’s relationship with the much younger Scotty Thorson between 1917 and 1982. Liberace was famously closeted – insisting publicly he just hadn’t found the right girl – but his secret threatened to be exposed after he split with Thorson, when the younger man sued him for alimony.

While talking about the movie the stars and director have promised that the movie doesn’t shy away from the sexual side of the men’s relationship. Indeed Soderbergh has suggested that the reason it ended up at HBO was because the the major studios are still afraid of anything that’s unapologetically gay.

Take a look at the new pic above.

One of the more intriguing gay-themed films arriving in 2013 is Behind The Candelabra, Steven Soderbergh’s HBO movie starring Michael Douglas as Liberace and Matt Damon as the showman’s younger lover, Scott Thorson.

Although Damon as played gay before, in The Talented Mr Ripley (and pretended to be gay in an episode of Will & Grace), this is the first time he’s actually had to get physical with another guy. Now he’s been talking about that with Playboy, saying “Michael was a wonderful kisser.”

The snogging took a bit of planning though, with Damon saying, “I had to come out of the pool, go over to Michael Douglas, straddle him on a chaise lounge and start kissing him… It’s not like I kiss him just once. We drew it up like a football plan.”

So how did he prepare for it? “I remember asking Heath Ledger after Brokeback Mountain, ‘How’d you do that scene with Jake?’ – meaning the scene where they start ferociously kissing. He said, ‘Well, mate, I drank a half case of beer in my trailer.’ I started laughing, and he goes, ‘No, I’m serious. I needed to just go for it. If you can’t do that, you’re not making the movie.'”

It’s a film he sounds proud of though, saying, “These two men were deeply in love and in a real relationship – a marriage – long before there was gay marriage. That’s not an insignificant thing. The script is beautiful and relatable. Their conversations when they’re dressing or undressing or having a spat or getting ready for bed? That’s every marriage. It feels like you’re witnessing something really intimate you would normally see with a man and a woman, but instead it’s two men, which was thrilling.”

And if you’re a Damon fan, you’ll be pleased to know he’s promising more flesh than we usually get to see in his movies. “Normally I’d say no to nudity,” he says, “but I just did a lot of it playing the long-term partner of Liberace. I mean, it’s tastefully done… But this movie’s not going to be for everyone.”

Some of you may be wishing it wasn’t done tastefully, but it’s nice to know the film isn’t going to be coy.

As for old rumours that stirred early in his career that he and Be Affleck were gay, Matt Says, “I never denied those rumors because I was offended and didn’t want to offend my friends who were gay—as if being gay were some kind of fucking disease. It put me in a weird position in that sense. The whole thing was just gross. But look, there have been great signs of progress—the fact that Anderson Cooper and Ellen DeGeneres can come out so beautifully and powerfully, and it’s a big fucking deal that it turns out nobody gives a shit. If Liberace were alive today, everybody would love his music and nobody would care what he did in his private life. Like with Elton John.”

Behind The Candelabra will arrive sometime during 2013.

For the last couple of years, director Steven Soderbergh has been slowly putting together a biopic of closeted gay entertainer Liberace, called Behind The Candelabra. Now the cameras are rolling, with Michael Douglas as Liberace and Matt Damon as his younger lover, Scott Thorson.

The first image of the two actors on set has been snapped, via E!, which sees Douglas and Damon really rocking the 1970s look for the HBO movie.

While Liberace went to his grave never publicly saying he was gay, after his relationship with Thorson broke up, the younger man – who had plenty of troubles of his own, including drug addiction – sued the entertainer for palimony. They settled out of court shortly before Liberace died of AIDS in 1987. The film about the two of them should arrive sometime in 2013. It’s due for an initial TV airing in the States, but may get a cinematic release over here.