Queen drummer Roger Taylor 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.
“I really do think that we need to sit back for a year or two and look at things and see if that is a believable or credible thing to do,” begins Taylor on the concept of a second Queen film. “The movie was a great hit. We were delighted, obviously. But I think I wouldn’t want to be seen as cashing in again. I’d have to have a very, very good script and scenario to make that work. Right now, I can’t think of a way of doing a sequel.”
A follow-up biopic 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.
“That is post–Live Aid,” says the drummer. “If somebody comes up with a genius plan, maybe we’ll think about it. [Laughs] Right now, we’re just very happy with what the movie did. There are so many sequels that don’t match up to the original one. There are obvious ones that did, but on the whole, I think it’s a dangerous territory.”
Taylor describes Queen’s award-winning run as “extraordinary. There was the Golden Globes and the BAFTAs and then the Oscars! We thought, ‘Hey, we’ll take it!’ It was a great ride, but it wasn’t our world. Our world is the rock & roll world. It was fascinating and very interesting to be involved. When the movie got four Oscars, it took a while for that to sink in. Mind you, they didn’t give Brian and me any. That’s OK, though.”
Taylor’s comments follow similar remarks by guitarist Brian May earlier this spring, when the rocker told Rolling Stone “Don’t think we didn’t think about it. We’ve talked. Basically we think not, at the moment. Things could change, I suppose, but I think it would be difficult.
“I don’t think that would be an uplifting thing to do. 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 added. “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.”
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