Don Cheadle tuning up Miles Davis biopic Kill The Trumpet Player

Don Cheadle's Kill The Trumpet Player, the actor's take on the "silent period" of jazz trumpeter Miles Davis, will co-star Ewan McGregor and Star Trek actor Zoe Saldana.

The film is co-written by Cheadle and will be his first as director. McGregor will play a Rolling Stone journalist and Saldana will play Davis's ex-wife, Frances.

Kill the Trumpet Player will focus on "a few dangerous days in the life of Miles Davis, as he bursts out of his silent period and conspires with a Rolling Stone writer (McGregor) to steal back his music", according to The Hollywood Reporter. This presumably refers to the period after the 1975 Newport Jazz Festival, when Davis – a heroin addict during the early 50s – retired from the public eye and spiralled back into drug addiction, before making a hesitant return to recording and performing.

Cheadle, who has been planning the film for a number of years and once referred to it as a "gangster story", rejected the idea that it could be called a traditional biopic at last week's American Film Market conference.

"I hope with this film we can kill the biopic," he said. "This film won't try to give a broad overview of Davis' life and give short shrift to this man's story. For us as creative people, the time of his life that was most interesting was the five years when he wasn't playing, when he was silent. What was going on in his mind? And how did he come out of it and return to music?"

Davis died in 1991 at the age of 65. His 1959 album Kind of Blue remains the best-selling jazz album of all time, is credited as an early pioneer of the 40s "cool jazz" movement. His later recordings helped invent jazz rock and fusion, while albums such as Sketches of Spain and In a Silent Way remain among the most critically-acclaimed jazz records of all time. Over a fifty-year career in music Davis collaborated with musicians as diverse as Charlie Parker, Herbie Hancock and Public Image Ltd. Hancock, who first worked with Davis during the early 60s, is thought to be involved in Cheadle's film.

Another - more traditional - Davis film is being developed by George Tillman Jr., the director behind the Notorious B.I.G. biopic, Notorious.

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