Sacha Baron Cohen is currently enjoying success at the box-office with his latest movie Grimsby, a film reviewed very positively on these pages. While on the promotional trail, and speaking to DJ Howard Stern, Cohen spoke about the Freddie Mercury biopic that has been involved in, and subsequently departed following creative differences. It was a dream casting that could have secured him the potential role of a lifetime. Here’s what he had to say:
“There are amazing stories about Freddie Mercury. The guy was wild. He was living an extreme lifestyle [of] debauchery. There are stories of little people with plates of cocaine on their heads walking around a party.”
He continued by touching on why he eventually left the project.
“[After] my first meeting, I should never have carried on because a member of the band —I won’t say who— said, ‘This is such a great movie, because such an amazing thing happens in the middle of the movie.’ I go, ‘What happens in the middle of the movie?’ He goes, ‘Freddie dies.’ I go, ‘So you mean it’s a bit like ‘Pulp Fiction,’ where the end is the middle and the middle is the end? That’s interesting.’ He goes, ‘No no no.’ So I said, ‘Wait a minute. What happens in the second half of the movie?’ And he said, ‘Well, we see how the band carries on from strength to strength.’ And I said, ‘Listen, not one person is going to see a movie where the lead character dies from AIDS and then you carry on to see [what happens to the band].”
Sounds like it be more of a Queen biopic, rather than one based on Freddie. I’m not sure if it would work either.
“It [becomes] a less interesting movie, but you’ve got to remember that they want to protect their legacy as a band, and they want it to be about Queen. And I fully understand that,” Cohen added.
The most recent actor to be linked to the role is Spectre star Ben Whishaw, who I’m sure will be equally as brilliant, but there has been no official word on that front for a little while either.
More as we get it.
