Sacha Baron Cohen had long been expected to play Freddie Mercury in a biopic about the Queen lead singer’s life, but he has dropped out due to “creative differences.”
Deadline reports that Sacha Baron Cohen will no longer star in the Freddie Mercury biopic because of artistic differences between him and the remaining members of Queen.
Baron Cohen had wanted to play a true to life portrayal of Freddie Mercury, but that’s not what Queen wants. Queen has script and director approval over the film, so what they say goes. Queen wants the movie to be rated PG, but Cohen wanted a movie that would be rated R and show every aspect of Mercury’s life for what it truly was, particularly his journey with his sexuality.
The resemblance between Cohen and Mercury is obviously very striking, and that alone made him the most obvious candidate. Beyond the resemblance between the two is that Cohen always throws himself so far into every role he plays, so it could have been expected that watching Cohen play Mercury would be like watching Mercury himself. It’s a shame nothing could be worked out.
Cohen had been doing plenty of work to make the Freddie Mercury movie the movie he wanted. He wanted Peter Morgan to write the script and brought in various directors including David Fincher and Tom Hooper, but Queen rejected all of them.