Actor Sacha Baron Cohen went on Howard Stern’s show to explain why he quit on the Freddie Mercury biopic.
There are amazing stories about Freddie Mercury. The guy was wild. He was living an extreme lifestyle [of] debauchery. There are stories of little people with plates of cocaine on their heads walking around a party.
It [becomes] a less interesting movie, but you’ve got to remember — and I understand it — they are a band, they want to protect their legacy as a band, they want it to be about Queen.
And I fully understand that.
[After] my first meeting, I should never have carried on because a member of the band, I won’t say who, he said, ‘This is such a great movie because such an amazing thing happens in the middle of the movie.’
I go,
‘What happens in the middle of the movie?’
He goes,
‘Freddie dies.’
I go, ‘
So you mean, it’s a bit like Pulp Fiction, the end is the middle, and the middle is the end? That’s interesting.’
He goes,
‘No no no.’
So I said,
‘Wait a minute, what happens in the second half of the movie?’
And he said,
‘Well, we see how the band carries on from strength to strength.’
And I said,
‘Listen, not one person is going to see a movie where the lead character dies from AIDS, and then you carry on to see [what happens to the band].”
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According to Deadline, Sacha said,
“the band wanted to make more of a PG movie about Queen while Cohen was counting on a gritty R-rated tell-all centered around the gay singer.”