A passion project of Don Cheadle’s for years, the Miles Davis film Miles Ahead is gathering steam, and Cheadle is busy putting the cast together at last. He’s just recruited Keith Stanfield, who impressed us all so much in **Short Term 12.
Cheadle co-wrote the script with Steven Baigelman and is using the film as his directorial debut, in addition to playing jazz icon Davis. Eschewing the usual straightforward biopic format, he’s focusing on a few difficult days in the musician’s life, with Davis joining forces with a Rolling Stone reporter (Ewan McGregor) to track down a stolen recording he hopes will breathe new life into his career.
Stanfield is set to play Junior, a talented but impressionable young trumpet player who is involved with the theft. He joins a cast that should, assuming the deals goes through, also star Zoe Saldana as Frances Davis. Cheadle plans to start the cameras rolling in Cincinnati next month.
Since his breakout role in** Short Term 12**, Stanfield has won work in The Purge: Anarchy and will be seen in two of James Franco’s seemingly endless films, Memoria and American History. He’s also just finished working on Martin Luther King / civil rights period pic Selma.