Don Cheadle Is Crowdfunding A Miles Davis Biopic

Renowned actor and Iron Man franchise star Don Cheadle has turned to crowdfunding to help make his eagerly awaited Miles Davis biopic a reality.

The planned film has been a passion project of Cheadle's for years, and he will not only star as the trumpet-playing trailblazer for it, but make his directorial debut as well.

To aid in realising his dream of telling the music great's life story on the big screen, Cheadle has started an Indiegogo campaign, open until July 10, to raise the necessary $US325,000 he needs to bring Miles Ahead – formerly titled Kill The Trumpet Player – to life.

“This summer, I'm going to be making my feature directorial debut with a movie I've been working on for many years that's really near and dear to my heart,” Cheadle says in a four-minute expositional video on the campaign page.

“It's a movie based on the life and music of Miles Davis entitled Miles Ahead. Miles Davis was not a typical jazz musician – in fact, that's a word that he really didn't care for. He felt the word 'jazz' was too limiting to really express the breadth and scope of what he did. He preferred that his work be referred to as 'social music'; the music of its time.

“And, in keeping with that spirit, I think that it's only fitting that the making of this movie be a social experience. So, we are turning to the social mediums of our time so that we can bring this man whose musical shoulders we metaphorically sit on forward into our time.”

Excitingly, the film - which features Ewan McGregor as "an unreliable Rolling Stone reporter" and Zoe Saldana as Davis' former wife Frances - draws on the experience of frequent Davis collaborator Herbie Hancock and composer Robert Glasper, with Cheadle promising a soundtrack “peppered with people from today, keeping in a Miles Davis theme … so who knows who might show up on the soundtrack? Jay-Z? DJ Skrillex? Kendrick Lamar? Dr Dre? Nas? The possibilities are endless.”

As Cheadle expresses in the video, which you can watch below, the team is closer than they have ever been to realising the biopic's vision, and although they're only about 9% of the way there with just more than a month remaining, here's hoping the social media community can show the Miles Ahead team just how social it can be.