British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen spent six years of his life trying to make a serious biopic on the life of Queen singer Freddie Mercury, but it all fell apart. In an interview with Howard Stern this week, the actor finally explained what happened.
While on The Howard Stern Show to promote The Brothers Grimsby, which opens this weekend, Baron Cohen said that he was really interested in making a serious movie about the life of Mercury, who died after a battle with AIDS in 1991.
“There are amazing stories about Freddie Mercury,” the Borat star said, notes Rolling Stone. “The guy was wild. I mean he was living an extreme lifestyle. There are stories of… little people with plates with cocaine on their heads walking around a party.”
It sounds like the remaining members of Queen - Brian May and Roger Taylor - wanted a PG-style movie. He said he did get that, but he knew he should have walked away after his first meeting with the band. One member (Stern thinks it was May) told him that Mercury would die in the middle of the movie.
Cohen thought that this meant the movie would be like Pulp Fiction, where the story unfolds out of order. But he was shocked to find out that the band wanted to make the second half of the movie about their lives after Mercury’s death.
As recently as March 2015, there were rumors that Baron Cohen still wanted to make it. He had first dropped out in July 2013.
“At the end of the day it really was an artistic difference,” Baron Cohen told Stern.
Queen has still attempted to make the Mercury movie, but it no longer has a director. The group has been touring with Adam Lambert. Original bassist John Deacon no longer performs with them.