We've heard some rumblings that Don Cheadle has a Miles Davis biopic in the works, and, in 2010, jazz hero Herbie Hancock was reported to be composing the score. Now, Cheadle has finally shed some light on the long-gestating project.
The actor told the Wall Street Journal [via The Playlist], "It's not a biopic, per se. It's a gangster pic. It's a movie that Miles Davis would have wanted to star in. Without throwing history away, we're trying to shuffle it and make it more cubist. The bulk of it takes place in '79, in a period where he actually wasn't playing. But we traverse a lot of it [his life], but it's not a cradle to grave story."
Clearly Cheadle has a strong vision for the film, but that isn't necessarily going to help him get in made any faster. He explained, "It's three to five years average for most movies to get made, but often it's 10 or 15 years. This is the kind of movie the business 10 years ago may have leapt at. But now, you don't really see movies like this. We have a studio offer and we're trying to back into a budget number, like we always have to do, without gutting the piece."
Hopefully he can figure out a way to bring the budget down enough to make this happen, since it's about time that the legendary jazz trumpeter got the biopic treatment.
Don't confuse this film with Miles, which is another planned forthcoming biopic about Davis. That one is reportedly being written by Isaac Fergusson and will be directed by George Tillman Jr. (Notorious, Faster).
The actor told the Wall Street Journal [via The Playlist], "It's not a biopic, per se. It's a gangster pic. It's a movie that Miles Davis would have wanted to star in. Without throwing history away, we're trying to shuffle it and make it more cubist. The bulk of it takes place in '79, in a period where he actually wasn't playing. But we traverse a lot of it [his life], but it's not a cradle to grave story."
Clearly Cheadle has a strong vision for the film, but that isn't necessarily going to help him get in made any faster. He explained, "It's three to five years average for most movies to get made, but often it's 10 or 15 years. This is the kind of movie the business 10 years ago may have leapt at. But now, you don't really see movies like this. We have a studio offer and we're trying to back into a budget number, like we always have to do, without gutting the piece."
Hopefully he can figure out a way to bring the budget down enough to make this happen, since it's about time that the legendary jazz trumpeter got the biopic treatment.
Don't confuse this film with Miles, which is another planned forthcoming biopic about Davis. That one is reportedly being written by Isaac Fergusson and will be directed by George Tillman Jr. (Notorious, Faster).
