Don Cheadle’s “Miles Ahead” movie about jazz icon Miles Davis has been acquired by Sony Pictures Classics for distribution.
The film, shot last summer in Cincinnati starring Cheadle and Ewan McGregor, “is likely to arrive (in theaters) this fall, with an awards campaign to accompany it,” reports the Los Angeles Times. Without a distributor, “its immediate fate was uncertain,” the site says.
“Miles Ahead” and Cate Blanchett’s “Carol,” filmed here in April last year, could arrive in theaters about the same time. The release of “Carol” has been moved up from December to Nov. 20, the big movie weekend before Thanksgiving, according to the International Movie Database.
“Miles Ahead,” Cheadle’s directorial debut, will premiere on the closing night of the New York Film Festival, Oct. 11. The film is set in 1979, as the trumpeter was ending his five-year self-imposed “silent period” out of the public eye.
Deadlinequoted New York Film Festival Director Kent Jones praising the film in July:
“I admire Don’s film because of all the intelligent decisions he’s made about how to deal with Miles, but I was moved—deeply moved—by ‘Miles Ahead’ for other reasons. Don knows, as an actor, a writer, a director, and a lover of Miles’ music, that intelligent decisions and well-planned strategies only get you so far, that finally it’s your own commitment and attention to every moment and every detail that brings a movie to life. ‘There is no longer much else but ourselves, in the place given us,’ wrote the poet Robert Creeley. ‘To make that present, and actual … is not an embarrassment, but love.’ That’s the core of art. Miles Davis knew it, and Don Cheadle knows it.”
