Everything You Need to Know About the Queen Movie ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’
The Queen movie has taken a long and dramatic road to production. In the list below, you'll find out everything we know about it so far.
Alternately pegged as the band's story and a Freddie Mercury biopic, the film will document Queen's early years. But it's had numerous starts and stops to get to where it is now, with several writers, directors and actors joining the creative team, only to drop out for one reason or another.
Stephen J. Rivele and Christopher Wilkinson, who have penned scripts for biopics about Muhammad Ali and Richard Nixon, were originally hired to write the movie. Then Oscar-nominated writer Anthony McCarten (The Theory of Everything) was said to be joining the project, but he was replaced by Revolutionary Road writer Justin Haythe.
The director slot has been just as chaotic, with Stephen Fears (High Fidelity, The Grifters) and Dexter Fletcher each reported to be at the helm before they quit. Bryan Singer subsequently came on board, but then he was fired. Fletcher then returned to the fold. All of that followed another public switcheroo when Sasha Baron Cohen, who was set to play Mercury, left the project due to creative differences with the band in 2013. British actor Ben Whishaw was slated to take his place, but that fell through too.
“It’s actually happening," Brian May finally announced in July 2017. "We’ve stayed with it for the last 12 years to shepherd it to the right place where we feel it would do Freddie justice. We only get one shot at this, and that’s it.”
Check out the following list to learn about how all the drama panned out, and what to expect from the movie when it finally reaches screens.
UPDATE 3/27: According to Variety, the release date for Bohemian Rhapsody, originally scheduled to be Dec. 25, 2018, has been pushed forward by Fox to Nov. 2.