After a long and difficult development process, a Miles Davis biopic is finally in the can thanks to director, co-writer, star and huge Davis fan Don Cheadle. The first full trailer for Miles Ahead has arrived and can be seen here{
Side-stepping many of the conventions of the biopic genre, Miles Ahead instead largely focuses on one specific period of Davis’ life, a tumultuous five-year span that saw him pull back from music and navigate a fraught relationship with first wife Frances Taylor Davis (Emayatzy Corinealdi).
Ewan McGregor is Rolling Stone journalist Dave Brill, sent to cover some potential new material from the man, only to discover that Davis is not happy with his label or his output. Despite a prickly start, the two become close friends.
“This was something that had been a periphery for me,” Cheadle told Entertainment Weekly when he began work on the film. “I never thought about portraying him, really. I had done several other quote-unquote biopics and was always struck by the limitations they presented, because they were trying to be historically accurate. So I didn’t want to do another biopic. When I heard the idea, from various people who had played with him, producers, writers, that this could potentially be something, I thought, 'if the script is great, I would be open to it since he’s always been a fascinating figure to me.'"
After a festival run that included Sundance, the film arrives in US cinemas on April 1 and lands in the UK on April 22.