Don Cheadle will star as Miles Davis in Kill the Trumpet Player, a biopic on the jazz pioneer. Cheadle has been working on the project for years and claims it will not be a traditional biopic.
At the American Film Market (AFM), Cheadle said, “Let’s kill that [biopic] term, OK? I hope with this film we can kill the biopic. This film won’t try to give a broad overview of Davis’ life and give short shrift to this man’s story. For us as creative people, the time of his life that was most interesting was the five years when he wasn’t playing, when he was silent. What was going on in his mind? And how did he come out of it and return to music?”
Don Cheadle will be making his directional debut in Kill the Trumpet Player and co-wrote the script with Steven Baigelman. The biopic will star Ewan McGregor as a Rolling Stone reporter, Zoe Saldana as Miles’ former wife, Frances Davis.
BiFrost Pictures’ Daniel Wagner will finance and produce the film.
Wagner said in an announcement, “Don is one of our generation’s greatest actors, and this is the role he was born to play. His take on the conventional biopic of one of music’s most celebrated icons is cinematic ‘jazz’ and too unique to resist. It fits naturally with BiFrost’s commitment to support talent and their passion projects, so we are thrilled to work with Don on his feature directorial debut.”
Kill the Trumpet Player is set to begin production in June.
Miles Davis died in 1991 at age 65.
