Queen guitarist Brian May is sharing his thoughts on the likelihood of a sequel to the band’s 2018 biopic, “Bohemian Rhapsody”, in a new interview with Rolling Stone.
Directed by Dexter Fletcher, the film – which follows Queen from their formation in 1970 through to their legendary 1985 Live Aid appearance – won four Academy Awards last year, including Best Actor to Rami Malek for his portrayal of Freddie Mercury, and earned more than $900 million dollars at the box office to become the highest-grossing music biopic in history.
As May and the band remain in isolation during the pandemic after recently rescheduling their UK and European Rhapsody tour to 2021, Rolling Stone checked in with the guitarist about the chances of a follow-up movie.
“Don’t think we didn’t think about it,” says May. “We’ve talked. Basically we think not, at the moment. Things could change, I suppose, but I think it would be difficult.”
Any sequel would likely focus on Mercury’s final years where he left public life to battle his HIV diagnosis privately and record the Queen albums “The Miracle” and “Innuendo”, before he passed away in 1991 at the age of 45 due to complications from AIDS.
“I don’t think that would be an uplifting thing to do,” explains the rocker. “I’m not saying it’s impossible because there is a great story there, but we don’t feel that’s the story we want to tell at the moment.
“There’s a million things in our career which you couldn’t show in a movie since the movie had to be so simplified to make it watchable,” May adds. “But we don’t really think there’s another movie there. That’s the long and the short of it. I think we should look somewhere else. There are other ideas that we had, but I don’t think a sequel will happen. But we have looked at it pretty seriously.”
Queen’s music video for their 1975 classic, “Bohemian Rhapsody”, passed 1 billion views on YouTube last year to become the first pre-1990’s video to reach the milestone on the platform.
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