Iron Man and Miles Ahead actor, Don Cheadle has been confirmed to be in talks to star and produce the biopic Prince of Darkness, the story centring on Wall Street’s first black millionaire Jeremiah G. Hamilton.
Related: Miles Ahead Interview with Don Cheadle
The story which is to be adapted from Shane White’s biography of Hamilton, Prince of Darkness: The Untold story of Jeremiah G. Hamilton, focuses on Hamilton, a man who is virtually absent from modern historical literature, he first came to prominence in 1828 after being caught hiding in a fishing boat transporting counterfeit coins but almost a decade later emerged with a fortune after the great fire of New York in 1835 and by the time of his death in 1875 had amassed a total of $2 million dollars.
Hamilton was described as quite the character who dealt mainly in the white business world, married a white woman bought a mansion in rural New Jersey and even owned railroad stocks in trains even though, as a black man, he was not legally allowed to ride.
The book synopsis reads; In the middle decades of the nineteenth century, Jeremiah G. Hamilton was a well-known figure on Wall Street. Cornelius Vanderbilt, America’s first tycoon, came to respect, grudgingly, his one-time opponent. The day after Vanderbilt’s death on January 4, 1877, an almost full-page obituary on the front of the National Republican acknowledged that, in the context of his Wall Street share transactions, ‘There was only one man who ever fought the Commodore to the end, and that was Jeremiah Hamilton.’ What Vanderbilt’s obituary failed to mention, perhaps as contemporaries already knew it well, was that Hamilton was African American. Hamilton, although his origins were lowly, possibly slave, was reportedly the richest coloured man in the United States, possessing a fortune of $2 million, or in excess of two hundred and $50 million in today’s currency.”
Adapting the script for the screen is Cheadle’s writing partner from Miles Ahead, Steven Baigelman, a story loosely based on the forgotten years of the Jazz legend Miles Davis which Cheadle also took the lead role as well as directing and producing.
