Don Cheadle has lined-up five feature film projects that he’ll produce and star in. Among them is a biopic of jazz legend Miles Davis, on which he plans to make his feature directing debut.
Cheadle has set up the projects through Crescendo Productions, the company in which he partners with longtime managers Kay Liberman and Lenore Zerman.
Nixon screenwriters Stephen J. Rivele and Chris Wilkinson are penning the Davis film, and Liberman and Zerman said they have secured music and life rights to the jazz legend, with whom Cheadle has long been intrigued.
Also on Cheadle’s plate is Traitor, a politically charged drama that was written and will be directed by Jeff Nachmanoff (The Day After Tomorrow). Cheadle will star as an operative embedded in a terrorist organization who becomes the target of federal agents; they fear he’s crossed the line and actually become a terrorist himself.
Quest to Ref is a comic vehicle for Cheadle, written by Ben Watkins and Guy Guillet. The story concerns a disenchanted lawyer who follows his life dream to become a pro basketball ref.
The Peter Biegen-scripted drama Broken Adonis has Michael Apted attached to direct. The story concerns an ex-con (Cheadle) who forms an unlikely relationship with a border patrol officer and her young informant.
Cheadle continues to work with “Ocean’s” co-star Brad Pitt’s Plan B and Reason Pictures on Marching Powder, a fact-based story of a drug dealer who spent five years as a tour guide in the notorious San Pedro Prison in Bolivia. Cheadle will play the tour guide.
