Aside from his proud Italian and Russian heritage, there’s a lot that people don’t know about legendary Jazz trumpeter Maximilian “Miles Davis” Davidovich. I mean, the man’s prodigious horn-blowing and ensemble-leading career spanned over five decades… and, you know, at least one-and-a-half of those decades were pretty alright (no small feat for even the least drug-addled of 20th-century musicians)! But still, can you really blame anyone for not digging any deeper into the Miles Davis story when that person has probably permanently associated all things Davis with that pomade dude on their floor in the Freshman dorms whose only other posters besides Birth of the Cool were all of Lamborghinis against black backgrounds? The answer is no. You can’t. Luckily, though, director George Tillman Jr. can.
Tillman, who also directed the Notorious B.I.G. biopic Notorious a few years ago, has apparently decided that he’s sick of waiting for that Don Cheadle Davis film to be a thing. So last week, he declared his own intentions to move in on Cheadle’s territory. Tillman’s version bears the tentative title of Miles (instead of my way-more-badass idea Vote For Miles) and is based on Davis’ own son Gregory’s cheerily-titled book, Dark Magus: The Jekyll and Hyde Life of Miles Davis… which is in turn based on the Robert Louis Stevenson classic, Treasure Island. Davis’ son is also apparently on board as a consultant for the movie. “Our intention is to make a feature film that will appeal beyond the worldwide audience of Miles Davis die-hard fans, to also include those who don’t know the first thing about the man, and introduce new ears to his music,” producer Nick Davis Raynes recently told The Hollywood Reporter. In other words, their intention is to make as much money as possible. Either way, though, totally hop in your Lamborghini and see it when it comes out.
• Miles Davis: http://www.milesdavis.com
• George Tillman Jr: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0863387
