Don Cheadle’s first shot as a director has been picked up by Sony Pictures Classics.
The studio announced on Wednesday that it had acquired the worldwide rights for Miles Ahead, a film focused on legendary jazz musician Miles Davis.
“Miles was many things…a supreme artist and a national treasure but also an enigma to those around him, especially during his so-called quiet period,” said Cheadle in a statement. “With the family’s blessing and Miles’ tenets on creativity as our guide, we used these cloistered years as a jumping off point to compose the story of a self-exiled artist creating his own ‘centrifugal adventure’ to spin himself back into playing music again.”
According to Entertainment Weekly, Miles Ahead focuses on a handful of days in Davis’ (Cheadle) life, when he seldom recorded and sought the assistance of a Rolling Stone writer (Ewan McGregor) to help plan steal back his music.
It’s a passion project of Cheadle’s and has been in development since 2008. He’s long admired Davis, who died in 1991.
“The thing about Miles Davis was that he thought of himself as a social musician who played social music and didn’t want to be boxed in and defined,” he told EW last year. “He could recognize talent that very few could and not only recognized it, but gave the people with whom he played room to develop and grow and stretch out and find their own voices.”
Miles Ahead also stars Emayatzy Corinealdi, Michael Stuhlbarg, and Keith Stanfield.
It will makes its world premiere on Oct. 11 at the New York Film Festival.
