Don Cheadle is set to play jazz legend Miles Davis in an upcoming film focussing on the trumpeter's "silent period" alongside Ewan McGregor and Zoe Saldana. Though Cheadle has stressed that the movie will not be a biopic in the strictest biographical sense, Kill the Trumpet Player will focus on "a few dangerous days in the life of Miles Davis, as he bursts out of his silent period and conspires with a Rolling Stone writer (McGregor) to steal back his music," according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Don Cheadle
Don Cheadle Will Act And Direct In An Upcoming Miles Davis Movie.

As well as taking on the complex lead role, Cheadle will also direct the piece and has been planning the film for several years. "It's not a biopic, per se. It's a gangster pic. It's a movie Miles Davis would have wanted to star in," he told the Wall Street Journal, adding "Without throwing history away, we're trying to shuffle it and make it more cubist."

The film will centre on a period during the late seventies when Cheadle has retired from playing music and withdrew almost completely from the public eye partly due to sex and drug addictions. Ewan McGregor will play a Rolling Stone journalist whilst Zoe will play Davis' ex-wife, Francis.


"I hope with this film we can kill the biopic," said Davis during last week's American Film Market conference. "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?" (via The Guardian).

Don Cheadle ITV
Don Takes On The Challenge To Portray One Of The World's Most Famous Trumpeters.

Although Rolling Stone predicted his demise during the seventies, Davis died in 1991 after a stroke combined with pneumonia at the age of 65. Despite a turbulent career, his landmark 1959 Kind of Blue is still the best-selling jazz album of all time and he is credited with pioneering the 'cool jazz' movement from the forties and popularising the music style.