Legendary jazz trumpeter Miles Davis is getting the biopic treatment, and Don Cheadle is attached to both direct and star in the highly anticipated film. Production is set to begin in Summer 2014.
Kill The Trumpet Player is also set to feature Ewan McGregor as a Rolling Stone journalist and Zoe Saldana as Davis’s wife, Frances. Former Davis collaborator Herbie Hancock is also reportedly involved in the film as a consultant.
Cheadle told the Wall Street Journal that he would make sure the film did true justice to the grit and goodness of Davis’ life. “It’s a gangster pic,” he explained. “It’s a movie Miles Davis would have wanted to star in. I don’t think anyone’s going to be making the kind of movie we’re making”.
Don’s promising comments aside, the film is reportedly set in the period in which Davis retired from music for five years, before his subsequent return in 1979. The film will mark Cheadle’s directorial debut, and he co-wrote the script with Steven Baigelman.
There is a second project currently ongoing that will also focus on Davis’ life, from director George Tillman Jr. Cheadle shrugged off potential concerns over the timing though, saying: “If the world is ready for two Miles Davis movies, fantastic.
A pioneering jazz legend, Davis died in 1991 at age 65.
