Brian May Still Confident In Queen/Mercury Biopic Despite Setbacks
Queen’s Brian May says he and drummer Roger Taylor remain committed to shepherding the biopic Bohemian Rhapsody through to completion, even in the wake of recent problems.
The film has been in the making for the past eight years and recently switched directors, from Bryan Singer to Dexter Fletcher, after previous issues with actors and scripters. In a new interview with Britain’s TeamRock, May says that he and Taylor are “very conscious that we get one shot, and if we don’t do it, someone else will do it badly. We will do it without avoiding anything — any aspect of Freddie (Mercury). But we will try to keep it all in balance. I think if we get it right it will crystallize the way the world understands Freddie…And the whole thing about his sexuality and his flamboyance, if you want to call it that, and all the things that made him tick, they are also vitally important as well, and none of them can be ducked or smoothed over. We don’t want to present him as some kind of unreal person. He had, like the rest of us, his great bits and his not-so-great bits. And in a sense, there’s a kind of superhero quality to him. I think if we get it right, people will appreciate all over again what a great bit of machinery Freddie was.”
May adds that he’s hopeful that with the recent directorial change the film is in good shape.
“We’re finally seeing it coming to fruition, although I can’t say too much about it,” he notes. “Eight years we’ve been working on getting it off the ground. Roger and I — to some extent against our will — have hung in there for all this time. But finally, we’ve arrived at a place where we have the right director and the right script and we feel good about it.”
Bohemian Rhapsody is scheduled for release on Christmas Day 2018, with Mr. Robot‘s Rami Malek playing Mercury.
Gary Graff is an award-winning music journalist who not only covers music but has written books on Bob Seger, Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen.
