Entertainment

New sneak peek at Queen movie shows off Freddie’s saucy moves

Sep 16, 2018

Rami Malek, who plays Freddie Mercury in the film, shows off his moves on stage. Source: 20th Century Fox

Queen fans, brace yourselves.

The producers behind the upcoming Freddie Mercury biopic Bohemian Rhapsody have released a new clip from the film and its nothing short of fabulous.

The film, due out in October, tells the story of Queen’s meteoric rise to fame and Freddie’s transition from cheeky art student to one of the world’s most beloved and revered singers.

While fans have already been treated to a trailer for the film, this time we see the Queen bandmates in the studio working on their operatic masterpiece ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’.

As Roger Taylor sings “Galileo! Galileo!” in the studio, Freddie is seen watching him behind the booth and telling him to sing “higher, higher” as they work to capture that now-famous falsetto.

“Who even is Galileo?” Taylor asks at one point.

While music executives and radio DJs were dubious about ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’s’ commercial appeal at the time, it went on to become Queen’s highest-selling single and the third-highest selling British single of all time. (Somewhat bizarrely, ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’ from Band Aid 1984 is the second-highest selling UK single ever.)

Anticipation around the release of the new biopic as been building for months now, and Oscar buzz is already starting to build for Rami Malek, who plays Mercury in the film.

It’s a stroke of luck for Malek, who only got the part after Sacha Baron Cohen, of Borat and Ali G fame, dropped out of the movie due to reported “creative differences”. The script went through three writers before settling on a final version and its director, Bryan Singer, was fired just weeks before filming wrapped.

However, it seems to have come out the other side splendidly and positive reviews are already flooding in.

While the movie tracks the band’s early days performing gigs around London, it also touches on tensions surrounding Mercury’s private life and sexuality and his hunger for fame in the early 1980s. According to 20th Century Fox, the studio behind the film, the blockbuster culminates in Queen’s legendary July 1985 Live Aid performance at London’s Wembley Stadium, widely regarded as one of the best live performances of all time.

Speaking about Mercury to Rolling Stone magazine, Malek said: “Here’s a man that would sing ‘We Are The Champions’ in an arena to thousands of people and they’re all singing it back to him. His ability to unify people, no matter who they are, was so far ahead of it’s time. I can’t think of anyone else that was capable of that.”