MR. ROBOT Star Rami Malek to Play Freddie Mercury in Director Bryan Singer's Biopic
Mr. Robot star Rami Malek has just landed a pretty huge movie role as rock star Freddie Mercury in a biopic of the band Queen that is set to be directed by X-Men director Bryan Singer. That's a pretty great team of talent, and Malek is sure to give an incredible performance.
The long-in-the-works biopic, which is set up at Fox, will be called Bohemian Rhapsody, and Singer will direct it from a script written by Anthony McCarten, who was nominated for an Oscar for his work on The Theory of Everything.
This is the same project that Sacha Baron Cohen was attached to as Mercury, but after years of development he ended up walking away from it. According to previous reports, Cohen wanted to make a hardcore film that explored the personal life of Freddie and his wild lifestyle, but Queen wanted a lighter movie about the band with Freddie dying midway through the movie and the band trying to figure out how to move on without him. It sounds like Queen may have gotten their way.
Mercury was born in what is now Tanzania and grew up in India before moving to England in the mid-1960s. He teamed up with Brian May and Roger Taylor in 1970 to form Queen, a seminal '70s rock band with hits such as "Bohemian Rhapsody," "We Are the Champions," and "Somebody to Love" (and who can forget their soundtrack work for Flash Gordon and Highlander?). Mercury, generally acknowledged to have one of the great voices in rock, died in 1991 from complications due to AIDS. He was 45.
What do you think about Malek taking on the role of Mercury for Singer?