Don Cheadle will debut as a director in a feature film about Miles Davis, the legendary jazz trumpeter, Variety reports. He will also star as the innovative jazz icon, who Cheadle says has long fascinated him.
03/01/2007 - Don Cheadle - © Terry Thompson / Photorazzi
Many actors, writers and producers have in the past expressed an interest in doing a biopic about the charismatic trumpeter, who ruled the jazz roost for 40 years. But this project will be the first to make it to the big screen. A key to pushing the film project forward: The rights to the music and life of Davis have been obtained. That according to Kay Liberman and Lennie Zerman, partners with Cheadle in Crescendo Productions.
Cheadle, acclaimed for his starring role in "Hotel Rwanda," will produce and star in a total of five films under the Crescendo banner, says Variety, including the Davis opus which is the only he's also set to direct. Stephen J. Rivale and Chris Wilkinson will write the screenplay for the Miles Davis story, said Variety The duo scripted "Nixon," director Oliver Stone's controversial take on the former president who left office under the cloud of Watergate.
The Crescendo package with Cheadle was revealed at ShoWest, the get-together for theatrical film exhibitors now underway in Las Vegas. Yesterday, Cheadle was honored as "male star of the year" by the gathering of cinema operators. Cheadle appears next in "Ocean's Thirteen," directed by Steven Soderbergh, which hits theaters at the beginning of June.
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