LONDON, Dec 8 — A handful of well-rated movies and history with 20th Century Fox preceded Dexter Fletcher’s appointment as director on Queen’s rock band biopic Bohemian Rhapsody.
British actor and director Dexter Fletcher has taken the helm of Bohemian Rhapsody for the movie’s remaining few weeks of filming.
It’s the second time in a row that Fletcher has presided over a movie about an icon of 1980s British pop culture.
Twentieth Century Fox parted ways with Bryan Singer in a December 4 announcement, citing “unexpected unavailability,” and have now installed a replacement for two or so weeks of filming.
Among his acting appearances, Fletcher starred in British children’s TV comedy drama Press Gang between 1989 and 1993, later taking roles in gangster movies Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Layer Cake, as well as Steven Spielberg’s wartime miniseries Band of Brothers.
By the early 2010s he was transitioning into directorial duties, steering 2011 prison parolee fatherhood drama Wild Bill, a 2013 adaptation of award-winning musical Sunshine on Leith and 2016 ski-jumping comedy biopic Eddie the Eagle, the last of which was distributed by Fox.
Sunshine on Leith achieved a US$4.1 million (RM22.73 million) box office and Eddie the Eagle, based on the unlikely exploits of Britain’s first Olympic ski jumper in nearly 60 years, made US$46 million worldwide.
Starring Emmy-winning Rami Malek of Mr. Robot as Queen’s charismatic lead singer Freddie Mercury, Bohemian Rhapsody charts the band’s rise to fame through the 1970s and 1980s.
Mercury died in 1991 at the age of 45 from AIDS complications, and the remaining members of Queen assembled 1995 final album Made in Heaven using material recorded by their vocalist before his passing.
Joining Malek in the biopic are Gwilym Lee of Jamestown as guitarist Brian May, Ben Hardy of X-Men: Apocalypse as drummer Roger Taylor, and Joseph Mazzello of The Social Network as bassist John Deacon.
Lucy Boynton from Murder on the Orient Express plays Mary Austin, Mercury’s girlfriend in the early 1970s and his lifelong companion, with Aaron McCusker of original British comedy drama Shameless as Jim Hutton, who was with Mercury from 1985.
Named after one of Queen’s greatest hits, Bohemian Rhapsody is set for release the week of December 25, 2018. — AFP-Relaxnews
