Brow Beat

Here’s the Extremely Cool Trailer for Don Cheadle’s Heralded Miles Davis Drama

Years in the making, Don Cheadle’s Miles Davis drama, Miles Ahead, finally made its world premiere at the New York Film Festival last fall, to enthusiastic response. Around that same time, those of us unlucky enough to miss that premiere got a brief glimpse of the film, in a clip featuring Davis as he manages a studio recording session—aside from introducing us to Cheadle’s spot-on husky delivery, the focus was mostly on the music.

Now the first official trailer has arrived, courtesy of Entertainment Weekly, and more is revealed: a shaggy, blonde Ewan McGregor, playing a Rolling Stone reporter named Dave Braden who winds up conspiring with Davis to steal back his session tapes; a sensual Emayatzy Corinealdi (Middle of Nowhere) as his first wife, Frances Taylor; and of course, Cheadle himself, oscillating between frantic, passionate, and of course, cool. The trailer starts off rather conventionally—like most musician biopics, it opens on its legend doing his musical thing to the sound of rapturous, disembodied applause.

The film focuses largely on the five-year period in Davis’ later life when he wasn’t recording music (with some flashbacks) rather than taking on his full-on life story. “[Davis’] art was so mercurial and spontaneous and not dedicated to any sort of form that he had done before,” Cheadle tells Entertainment Weekly. “I thought it would really be totally anathema to him to do something that felt standard, so to speak.” Miles Ahead is set for release on April 1.