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Sacha Baron Cohen Won't Rock Us, Drops Out Of Freddie Mercury Biopic
Sacha Baron Cohen attends the NBCUniversal Golden Globes party at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 13, 2013. (Photo by Jesse Grant/Getty Images for NBCUniversal)
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Sacha Baron Cohen seemed like the perfect actor to play the late Freddie Mercury, but he's walked away from a biopic about the Queen frontman over creative differences with the remaining band members.
Deadline reports that the band wanted to make more of a PG movie about Queen while Cohen was counting on a gritty, R-rated tell-all of the iconic singer, who died of bronchopneumonia brought on by AIDS in 1991.
According to Deadline, Cohen had brought in Peter Morgan (The Queen, Frost/Nixon) to write and various directors including David Fincher (Se7en, Fight Club) and Tom Hooper (The King's Speech) to develop the project for himself. However, the band reportedly did not approve of any of them.
Cohen, who's best known for his outrageous comedies Borat and Bruno, has long been attached to play Mercury, to whom he bears a striking resemblance.
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The actor will next be seen in Anchorman: The Legend Continues.
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