Don Cheadle has been working on his Miles Davis film, Miles Ahead, for so many years now that his dedication to the project is readily apparent. The film has cycled through directors and interest from studios and cable networks through its development process, but Cheadle’s admirable steadfast desire to not make this a standard biopic. You know, those cradle to grave stories that are always made about famous people (think Ray and Walk The Line and then remember how fantastically that formula was skewered in Walk Hard).

Instead, Miles Ahead focuses on one period of Miles Davis’ life – his reemergence after five years of artistic exile, commonly known as his “silent period.” Cheadle will also direct the film starring Ewan McGregor, Michael Stuhlbarg and Emayatzy Corinealdi. Head below for the first Miles Ahead image.

The Showtime comedy series House of Lies follows Marty Kaan (Don Cheadle) and his team of management consultants, who know how to play the corporate game better than anyone, by using every dirty trick in the book to woo powerful CEOs and close huge deals.  In Season 2, the team will not only be learning to adjust to the new Galweather Stern, after how the company was left at the end of last season, but Marty and his co-worker, Jeannie Van Der Hooven (Kristen Bell), will be trying to figure out exactly what happened during their very drunken night together.

While at the Showtime portion of the TCA Press Tour, show star/executive producer Don Cheadle talked about what’s in store for viewers this season, whether Marty and Jeannie will ever know exactly what happened between them, what he learned from Season 1 that has helped him with Season 2, that he enjoys being so involved with the production, and how he’s found the experience of getting to explore a character over a longer period of time.  He also talked about the challenges of juggling a film career with a TV show, what his hopes are for Iron Man 3, the fact that they’ll be doing re-shoots for the film next week in Manhattan Beach, the experience of working with director Shane Black, the surprise success of Flight, the status of the Miles Davis biopic, and what he’s currently working on with his production company.  Check out what he had to say after the jump.

In November, we reported that Notorious director George Tillman Jr. would be helming a biopic about legendary jazz musician Miles Davis.  Don Cheadle is also at work developing his own Davis project and he has provided some new details about his movie.  Cheadle says of his film:

“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.”

Hit the jump for more on this intriguing and welcome take on a Davis biopic.

Director George Tillman Jr. (Faster) will develop and helm a biopic based on the life of legendary jazz musician Miles Davis.  Davis was a major force in the music world for almost fifty years and he collaborated with other jazz legends like Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Gil Evans, and Thelonious Monk.  Tentatively titled Miles, the movie will be loosely based on book Dark Magus: The Jekyll and Hyde Life of Miles Davis written by Davis’ eldest son, Gregory.  Gregory Davis will consult on the movie, and the filmmakers will further develop Isaac Fergusson‘s original draft of the screenplay.  Like pretty much every famous musician of the 20th century, Davis was heavily into drugs.  However, he managed to break his addiction and influence other musicians until his death in 1991.

Hit the jump for more on the project.

In his new film, The Guard, Don Cheadle plays humorless FBI agent Wendell Everett in this comedic fish-out-of-water tale of murder, blackmail, drug trafficking and rural police corruption written and directed by John Michael McDonagh.  We sat down with Cheadle at a roundtable interview today to talk about The Guard and while we were at it we also asked him about his upcoming projects like Iron Man 3, Showtime’s House of Lies, his Miles Davis project, and The Avengers.

The big news for Marvel fans is that Cheadle says Iron Man 3 will probably shoot in February and “there’s talk of a War Machine spinoff.”  With Iron Man 3 hitting theaters May 3, 2013, a February start date makes a lot of sense.  In addition, Cheadle says that even though his contract had an option to appear in The Avengers, Marvel hasn’t “exercised that option yet.”  With filming underway in New Mexico, it’s looking like Tony Stark won’t have his pal Rhodey around.  Hit the jump for what he said and look for the full interview very soon.

Popular speculation views Antoine Fuqua’s picture, Brooklyn’s Finest, to be a re-hashed version of Martin Scorcese’s 2006 Oscar triumph, The Departed.  The assumption is that both movies use the same formula (powerful casts, acclaimed directors, and crooked cops v. career criminals) to tell the same story.  In reality, this comparison makes as much sense as Val Kilmer as Batman.  It quickly becomes apparent that Fuqua has seen those other cops and robbers films, and has literally flipped the script.

The actors themselves best explain why Fuqua’s soon-to-be-acclaimed picture successfully reinvents the cops and robbers formula.  In recent interviews with Wesley Snipes, Don Cheadle, and Richard Gere, the stars of the film explain what attracted each of them to the project, and what makes this film so unique.

Hit the jump for more: