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I was happy when I heard Sacha Baron-Cohen was off the Freddie Mercury biopic for many reasons, far too many to list…
Now it looks as if the flick is now rocking all the way to production and the part of Mercury has finally been cast!
Two months after Roger Taylor announced that Skyfall actor Ben Whishaw was the band’s preferred choice to take the lead role in the long-plannedQueen movie project, “Neo-nerd” Whishaw has been confirmed.
Whishaw, who gained excellent notices after playing Q in the record-breaking Bond film, has been handed the Mercury role in a film that will tell the story of the band in “a formative coming-of-age story … culminating in Queen headlining Live Aid in 1985″.
Though Mercury died in 1991 of Aids-related illness, but the film will apparently not tackle that aspect of his life.
Dexter Fletcher, who successfully tackled the Proclaimers musical Sunshine on Leith, has been taken on as director and the film’s heavyweight producers include Robert De Niro,Graham King and Jane Rosenthal.
A “passion project” for producer King and Mercury’s former bandmates, which originally saw Baron Cohen cast in the lead role and script work from Peter Morgan. However, Cohen left the project earlier this year, with it becoming apparent the band was unhappy with his brash comic personality. I couldn’t agree more!
“We felt Sacha probably wasn’t right in the end,” said Roger Taylor said in a recent interview.“We didn’t want it to be a joke. We want people to be moved.”
And is Ben Whishaw the guy to “move” us as he belts out renditions of Queen’s greatest hits? He played one of six incarnations of Bob Dylan in Todd Haynes’ experimental (and awesome) biopic I’m Not There (2007), though he spent his entire role sitting at a table and talking to the camera.
The as-yet-untitled flick will feature also feature many of Queen’s renowned hits, which include We Are the Champions, We Will Rock You and of course Bohemian Rhapsody. Production starts in 2014.
I guess the letter “Q” has more meaning to Ben than we ever thought… However, will he rock us as Mercury? Only time will tell!
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