‘Miles Ahead’ lands deal

One of the juicier questions of the upcoming awards season has been answered, with Sony Pictures Classics announcing that it has picked up the rights to “Miles Ahead,” the Miles Davis biopic directed by and starring Don Cheadle.

The movie has gained heat since the New York Film Festival announced it for closing night, but without distribution, its immediate fate was uncertain. Sony Pictures Classics did not announce a release date, but the movie is likely to arrive this fall, with an award campaign to accompany it.

“Miles Ahead” focuses on a tumultuous period in the jazz legend’s life as he seeks to rebound from a career and personal low, and recapture his creative mojo and the rights to his music. Cheadle, a first-time director, said in an announcement that he wanted to use these “cloistered” years of Davis’ life “as a jumping-off point to compose the story of a self-exiled artist creating his own ‘centrifugal adventure’ to spin himself back into playing music again.”