Don Cheadle (Hotel Rwanda, Iron Man 3) is in negotiations to produce and star in the upcoming biopic Prince of Darkness, according to Variety. The film is the story of 19th Century black millionaire Jeremiah G. Hamilton, and is adapted from Shane White’s biography of Hamilton, called “Prince Of Darkness: The Untold Story Of Jeremiah G. Hamilton, Wall Street’s First Black Millionaire.” The script will be written by Steven Baigelman, who co-wrote Miles Ahead with Cheadle (Cheadle also starred, produced and directed the 2015 film.)
Amazon Book Description
“In the middle decades of the nineteenth century Jeremiah G. Hamilton was a well-known figure on Wall Street. Cornelius Vanderbilt, America’s first tycoon, came to respect, grudgingly, his one-time opponent. The day after Vanderbilt’s death on January 4, 1877, an almost full-page obituary on the front of the National Republican acknowledged that, in the context of his Wall Street share transactions, ‘There was only one man who ever fought the Commodore to the end, and that was Jeremiah Hamilton.’ What Vanderbilt’s obituary failed to mention, perhaps as contemporaries already knew it well, was that Hamilton was African American. Hamilton, although his origins were lowly, possibly slave, was reportedly the richest colored man in the United States, possessing a fortune of $2 million, or in excess of two hundred and $50 million in today’s currency.”
Cheadle is known for his work in films like Traffic, Ocean’s Eleven, The Rat Pack, Miles Ahead, about the life of jazz musician Miles Davis, and for the role of Colonel James ‘Rhodey’ Rhodes / War Machine in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
