“There are amazing stories about Freddie Mercury. The guy was wild,” he said. “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.
They are a band, they want to protect their legacy as a band, they want it to be about Queen. And I fully understand that. [After] my first meeting, I should never have carried on because a member of the band – I won’t say who – he 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, 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].”
Sacha Baron Cohen on The Howard Stern Show discussing why he left the untitled Freddie Mercury biopic project in 2013, before apparently returning in 2015, and then leaving again.
They don’t need Queen’s permission to make a film about Mercury. Cohen could self produce a biopic if he liked and Eddie Redmayne could likely do a solid job if not Cohen.
What a huge mistake to not make it about Freddie and have Sasha play Freddie.
Freddie Mercury was absolutely amazing. Cohen would have been brilliant portraying Freddie. Definitely Oscar worthly.
Good, I’m so glad he said that!
gotta love when a band forgets who actually made them famous in the first place!