Don Cheadle Says His Miles Davis Biopic is Going Gangster?

From War Machine to Miles Davis...Don Cheadle is one of my favorite actors around, because of the diversity in the roles he pursues.  However, I must admit I'm puzzled when reading about his upcoming passion project, a biopic on late jazz musician Miles Davis.  Apparently, Cheadle has been planning this biopic for awhile, even going as far as to direct and star just to see it get made.  

Cheadle described the project in a new interview with the Wall Street Journal, and the film about Davis sounds like it's far from your typical biopic.  In fact, to read him describing it, it doesn't seem like a biopic at all.

"It's not a biopic, per se. It's a gangster pic. It's a movie that Miles Davis would have wanted to star in," Cheadle said.  

"Without throwing history away, we're trying to shuffle it and make it more cubist.  The bulk of it takes place in '79, in a period where he actually wasn't playing.  But we traverse a lot of it his life, but it's not a cradle to grave story."

I'm confused, but in Cheadle I usually trust.  The dude always delivers solid performances, from gut-wrenching dramas like Hotel Rwanda and Crash to light-hearted fare in Ocean's Eleven and Iron Man 2.

He also isn't worried a bit about a competing Davis' biopic being released by George Tillman Jr. (Men of Honor, Notorious).  Nor should he be, considering the rival movie would have to work really hard to be anything remotely like his "cubist" idea for the Davis pic.

"Look, if the world is ready to have two Miles Davis movies, fantastic. He should have eight or 10 of them. We're working with the family and we have all the music.  There's another period of music, about three or four years [that the other project appears to have rights to].  These estates are sometimes bifurcated.  We have what we need for our film. Look, God bless.  If there's another quality movie about this legend, that's great.  I don't think anyone's going to be making the kind of movie we're making."

My hat goes off to Cheadle for getting behind a movie idea so daring, and I can't wait to see what he comes up with.  Cheadle has a new interesting looking series called House of Lies, premiering on Showtime Sunday so be on the lookout for that.