Sacha Baron Cohen (best known for playing Ali-G) is set to play the role of Freddie Mercury in a movie about Queen. This is not rumour, as the rock band’s guitarist Brian May confirmed this to the BBC’s HardTalk programme.
Brian May said “We have Sacha Baron Cohen, which will probably be a shock to a lot of people, but he’s been talking with us for a long time”.
The film will have the screenplay penned by Frost/Nixon’s Peter Morgan and ‘Queen the film’, and will mainly focus on the period leading up to Live Aid in 1985. This Queen movie has started development and the working title is “Mercury”. Brian May and Roger Taylor will oversee music which will be featured in the movie.
Funnily enough Peter Morgans previous work include the Oscar-nominated film called “The Queen”.
If you want to see the interview with Brian May, the HARDtalk interview will be broadcast on BBC World News on Thursday 23 September and the BBC News Channel on Friday 24 September.
I hope he does him justice! Freddie touched the entire world with his love-embracing energy and lyrics. 20 years after his death, I paid tribute to him on my artist’s blog with a new portrait at http://dregstudiosart.blogspot.com/2011/11/killer-queen-portrait-of-freddie.html This new work of art is inspired by the words of many of Queen’s songs.
I understand that Freddie Mercury was a Zoroastrian by birth but I’m wondering whether he converted or not. I’m simply curious because he often mentions God in Queens songs. Now I do understand that The Zoroastrian equivalent to God is ‘Ahura Mazda’ but so why did he say the word God as opposed to his Zoroastrian title
Hello Vian
Many thanks for your comment. I think freddie would have use the word God because he was writing songs for a western audience, for whom, the word God, has a specific meaning. The Queen Back Catalogue would have sounded a lot different if there were songs like ‘In The Lap Of The Ahura Mazda Revisited’, ‘All Ahura Mazdas People’ or ‘Thank Ahura Mazda it’s Christmas’. (You could also use any of the following in place of Ahura Mazda, Ohrmazd, Ahuramazda, Hourmazd, Hormazd, Hurmuz, Aramazd or Azzandara.)
I am not sure how devout Freddie was at the time when Queen was at their most popular but I don’t think his religious choice had any impact on the use of the word ‘God’ in a song.