Taglines: The music you know, the story you don’t.
Bohemian Rhapsody is a foot-stomping celebration of Queen, their music and their extraordinary lead singer Freddie Mercury. Freddie defied stereotypes and shattered convention to become one of the most beloved entertainers on the planet. The film traces the meteoric rise of the band through their iconic songs and revolutionary sound.
They reach unparalleled success, but in an unexpected turn Freddie, surrounded by darker influences, shuns Queen in pursuit of his solo career. Having suffered greatly without the collaboration of Queen, Freddie manages to reunite with his bandmates just in time for Live Aid. While bravely facing a recent AIDS diagnosis, Freddie leads the band in one of the greatest performances in the history of rock music. Queen cements a legacy that continues to inspire outsiders, dreamers and music lovers to this day.
Bohemian Rhapsody is a 2018 biographical film about the British rock band Queen. It follows singer Freddie Mercury’s life from his joining the band in 1970, to their Live Aid performance at Wembley Stadium in 1985. The film is a British-American joint venture produced by 20th Century Fox, New Regency, GK Films, and Queen Films, with Fox serving as distributor.
Directed by Bryan Singer, it is written by Anthony McCarten, and produced by Graham King and former Queen manager Jim Beach. It stars Rami Malek as Mercury, with Lucy Boynton, Gwilym Lee, Ben Hardy, Joe Mazzello, Aidan Gillen, Tom Hollander, and Mike Myers in supporting roles. Queen members Brian May and Roger Taylor served as creative and musical consultants on the film.
As of 17 January 2019, Bohemian Rhapsody has grossed $199.7 million in the United States and Canada, and $580.2 million in other territories (including $64 million in the UK), for a total worldwide gross of $779.9 million, against a production budget of about $52 million. On 11 November, it surpassed Straight Outta Compton ($201.6 million) to become the highest-grossing musical biographical film of all-time worldwide. Bohemian Rhapsody also set all-time box office records for the highest-grossing musical biographical film, the highest-grossing biopic, and the highest-grossing traditional drama film.
Pre-production began in July 2017 in the United Kingdom, with principal photography beginning in London in September 2017. An exact replica of the 1985 Live Aid set at Wembley Stadium was created and brought to Bovingdon Airfield near Hemel Hempstead, where it was set up for rehearsals on 7 September 2017, with extras on set. There were about a hundred extras, who were all individually scanned 360° and digitally replicated to imitate a larger crowd. The entire Live Aid performance was filmed, but in the final cut “We Will Rock You” and “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” were cut out.
Queen archivist Greg Brooks was instrumental in helping recreate each scene to make it as true to life as possible. He worked daily with Fox for months from the beginning, providing answers to questions. When Malek was contacted about playing Mercury, he had only a casual knowledge of Queen. To become Mercury, Malek had to work many intense sessions with a movement coach (as well as learn to talk with prosthetic teeth). Besides examining Mercury’s movements, they also watched footage of Liza Minnelli, who was an inspiration to Mercury’s stage moves.
Malek also took singing and piano lessons, and had an accent coach, as well. Malek said, “I had to re-create things he did on the fly, onstage. There were many days I said to myself, ‘This is a lost cause.'” After finishing the film, Malek said that he became a “Queen super-fan”, saying, “I see Freddie as the best performer of all time… I never ceased to be astonished by this man.”
While Malek sang some parts in the film, producers inserted vocal stems from Queen songs as well as filling in parts with Canadian vocalist Marc Martel, a winner of the Queen Extravaganza Live Tour auditions. On 30 January 2018, Gwilym Lee posted to social media that the filming had finished.
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Bohemian Rhapsody (2018)
Directed by: Bryan Singer
Starring: Rami Malek, Gwilym Lee, Ben Hardy, Joseph Mazzello, Aidan Gillen, Allen Leech, Tom Hollander, Meneka Das, Mike Myers, Aaron McCusker, Dermot Murphy, Priya Blackburn
Screenplay by: Anthony McCarten, Peter Morgan
Production Design by: Aaron Haye
Cinematography by: Newton Thomas Sigel
Film Editing by: John Ottman
Costume Design by: Julian Day
Set Decoration by: Lucy Howe, Anna Lynch-Robinson
Art Direction by: Rachel Aulton, Sophie Bridgman, David Hindle, Stuart Kearns, Hannah Moseley, Alice Sutton
Music by: John Ottman
MPAA RAting: PG-13 for thematic elements, suggestive material, drug content and language.
Distributed by: 20th Century Fox
Release Date: November 2, 2018
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