Queen’s Brian May is “looking at” a Bohemian Rhapsody sequel
The guitarist spoke about the possibility of a second movie about the band on Instagram Live
Film News Queen
If you’re among the Bohemian Rhapsody defenders who actually think the Queen biopic was worthy of its four Oscars, there’s some good news for you: The band’s guitarist, Brian May, is back to thinking that Rami Malek could have another shot at playing Freddie Mercury, if the right screenplay comes along.
While on Instagram Live over the weekend, May was asked about making another movie about the band and replied, “We are looking at it. Yeah, we have been looking at ideas.” He adds, “We put a lot of heart and soul into making [Bohemian Rhapsody] and no one could have predicted [its success] as it was bigger than Gone With The Wind. But yes, we are thinking maybe it could happen, but it would have to be a great script. It’s going to take a while to figure that out.”
Bigger than Gone With The Wind is quite a stretch, but he’s right that for a whole year upon its release in 2018, people couldn’t stop talking about the musical biopic—but not all that attention was positive. Many Queen fans weren’t happy that the film glossed over Freddie Mercury’s queerness, focusing more on his relationship with Mary Austin—who remained one of his closest friends until his death. The film also stopped Mercury’s story with the band’s legendary Live Aid performance, leaving the last six years of the singer’s life out of the picture. We didn’t get to see Mercury’s last years battling AIDS, and we barely got to see him with his long-term partner Jim Hutton, who was given limited screen time. Bohemian Rhapsody didn’t even bother to get how Hutton and Mercury met right.
But then again, that’s what makes Bohemian Rhapsody a solid contender to get a follow-up. Mercury deserves a watchable biopic written by a queer screenwriter who understands his story—and a film that doesn’t have Bryan Singer’s name attached to it.
[NME]
22 Comments
Spoilers – it’s called “Radial Velocities In The Zodiacal Dust Cloud” and it’s about Brian May doing his astrophysics PhD thesis.
Would watch.
That’s only the first half of the movie; the second half is what Brian May considers to be the REALLY interesting part of the story – him going to make a cup of tea after submitting it, doing the bins, pottering around a bit in his shed.
Brian “Two Sheds” May, Ph.D.
Now Freddy Mercury has to think extra hard about his whole life before he plays…
And he never once payed for drugs!Not once.
I like to spend 20 minutes thinking of my career as a project manager right before I play “Wagon Wheel” around the campfire among friends who have no escape.
Great news for Marc Martel who did the voice , check out his unbelievable cover of “Love of my Life” :
“The guitarist spoke about the possibility of a second movie about the band on Instagram Live“
I know the movie-theater game has changed, but I’m not sure anyone wants to watch a whole movie on Instagram Live.
He may not have any idea what Instagram Live is. Like when your grandfather refers to “eh, that there Intra-web!”
A movie about Mercury’s final years? Yes.A movie about May & Taylor trying to soldier on after Freddie’s death (which they, apparently, wanted to do)? No. Pass.
They should make the version that Sacha Baren Cohen pitched, and just market it as a sequel to this movie, so everyone is completely shocked when they sit down to watch it
It’s ends with the movies death bed scene where Freddie tell Brain and Roger to try and make as much money as they can from his talent.
By hawking there songs for as many adverts as possible and drafting in a reality TV star to replace him so they can keep touring.
I think it’d be cool if he started doing business as Dr. May.
“Glossed over Freddie’s queerness”? I didn’t think there was enough gloss in every Claire’s in America for that!
God, this movie sucked colossal ass. It was like reading the Wikipedia page of Freddie Mercury, but with lip-synced concert film footage in between. Rocketman was significantly better.Wasn’t the reason we lost the grittier Sacha Baron Cohen version of the flick precisely because Brian May was so convinced that there was more to the Queen story beyond Freddie Mercury? If I remember right, he wanted to scrub out the drugs and gay sex and add more about Queen after Freddie, which absolutely nobody outside of Queen themselves agreed with.Can’t wait for the intensely interesting tale of the remaining Queen members in their sixties touring with the guy from Bad Company! And maybe we’ll get a trilogy, where we can learn about all the escapades of Queen in their seventies playing the same songs with the guy from American Idol.
Sascha Baron Cohen said that this is what Taylor and May originally wanted to do, and it was one of the reasons he left the film. I’ve worried they wanted to do that ever since.
Even in Bohemian, it felt like they were trying to downplay Freddie’s contributions in favor of their own. “Oh, Freddie was so brilliant and charismatic, but he could also be moody and difficult, and if he’d just listened to his bandmates more…” Gag me.
Am I the only one who thinks “I’m In Love With My Car” was unfairly overshadowed by that overblown, way-too-long drivel “Bohemian Rhapsody”?
Sequel to Bohemian Rhapsody ? I don’t think it is a good idea. Bohemian Rhapsody is a historical classic and it should not be tampered with…
I will forever remember this movie as me and a date getting it on in a theatre for the entire runtime as there was no one else there.
See, now THAT Freddie would’ve been proud of.
I hope they can find someone else who died of AIDS in the 90s to be the villain of the picture