The manifesto for this movie is hinted at in the first lines of the trailer and has been reiterated by director/writer/actor Don Cheadle on its press tour: if you’re going to make a film about jazz musician Miles Davis, it better have energy and style. Davis’s music didn’t adhere to formula, so his biopic shouldn’t, either. That’s why Cheadle threw out the genre’s traditional outline, instead placing Davis and a Rolling Stone writer in a gun-filled search for a stolen session tape. None of this really happened, but the point is to translate the spirit of Davis’s work to film, which makes the narrative leap a bold and entirely fitting choice.
Miles Ahead marks Cheadle’s feature writing and directing debut, having previously done a bit of television work. Nobody’s going to question his acting ability, but it will be interesting to see if he can pull off such a unique endeavor with a budget scraped from crowdfunding, his own money, and what he called the “financially imperative” addition of a white co-star (let’s just roll our eyes and move on from that one). Buoying hope for success is co-writer Steven Baigelman, who got a story credit on the non-traditional and very underrated James Brown biopic Get On Up.
This is one of the more surprising trailers making the rounds right now, and whether the film succeeds or fails, at least we’ll know they tried for something special.
Miles Ahead is directed by Don Cheadle and stars Cheadle, Ewan McGregor, and Emayatzy Corinealdi. It will be released in the U.S. on April 1st, 2016 and in the U.K. on April 22nd, 2016. For international release dates, click here.
How do you feel about populating a fictional story with real people? Let us know in the comments!
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