breaking news on the movie

[egret]

Sacha Baron Cohen has reportedly stepped down from the film due to disagreements about the direction the script was taking. Hmm.

This report says that Brian and Roger are vetoing anything they feel is too gritty because they want a family-friendly movie. [Rock and roll, fun for the whole family, no, wait.]

I wonder if Brian and Roger are blocking any kind of movie likely to upset Freddie's family, just as they recently intervened with the unfortunate Freddie as gorilla statue. 

Some of the irreverent comments on The A.V. Club report amused me, but many were offensive so read at your own risk.

Personally, I suspect that whatever movie they make will displease me on some level because I would want it to be perfect and nothing is. So this doesn't bother me but I know many more rational people were looking forward to it. Feel free to discuss.

Comments

[swordznsorcery]

I love the comment on the second link, which says that the best time to make a Freddie movie was back in the sixties. One can't help but agree with such logic. ;)

Not displeased. Cohen has been acting like a pillock for some time, and managed to alienate the gay community a while back. If he, as these stories suggest, is seeing this as some kind of vanity project, then it's better off without him. This is the Freddie Mercury story, not the Sasha Baron Cohen story! I imagine that the PG/R-rated thing is an over-simplification. Brian and Roger will not okay anything that risks bringing Freddie into disrepute. They've been defending his name since the day he died. If people want a "gritty tell-all", they can read a tabloid article.

I expect Brian will have something to say about this sooner or later.

[kabal42]

As you say, no movie is perfect, and especially in the bio-pic genre it's always tough. I'm not too upset if there's never a Freddie movie made, especially not if it was going to be someone else's vanity project.

[swordznsorcery]

Brian has been quiet about this so far, but he did post a slightly cryptic comment on Twitter yesterday about there being "so many lies and self-serving propaganda in the papers today."

Not necessarily about this of course, though it does make one wonder. I think we'd all assumed that there's more to the story than has been reported, anyway! Look what the truth of the gorilla story turned out to be.