Don Cheadle has been trying to get his biopic of jazz legend Miles Davies off the ground for a long time now, but with a director announced late last year (Notorious helmer George Tillman Jr.) he’s finally on-track, although it’s safe to say this isn’t going to be a conventional life story.

Talking about the project recently, Cheadle had this rather intriguing pitch:

It’s not a biopic, per se. It’s a gangster pic. It’s a movie that Miles Davis would have wanted to star in. Without throwing history away, we’re trying to shuffle it and make it more cubist.

Interesting. Unconventional takes on the lives of musical icons have cropped up in the past (Todd Hayne’s multiple actor portrayal of Bob Dylan in I’m Not There is a recent example) and as the potential audience for a film like this may be quite small, it makes financial sense to perhaps frame it within a genre which puts bums on seats.

Biopics in general always include a certain degree of creative licence, so why not offer an alternative take, as long as the essence of the artist is evident.

Via Collider