Bohemian Rhapsody is already the most successful musical biopic in movie history, and now it's started to add awards to its list of accolades. If this were any other movie you would fully expect talk of sequels to be rampant, but considering the story the movie tells, such a thing would seem impossible, right? Well, maybe not. Queen's Brian May who helped produce the movie suggests that, who knows, maybe a sequel could happen. According to May...
No. I think there's a natural culmination there. And that has pretty much always been the case, from the earliest scripts. We felt that was the pinnacle -- despite what some people have said in the press, who know fuck-all about it. Somebody who shall be nameless said: 'Oh, they're going to portray Freddie dying in the middle of the movie, and then the rest of it is gonna be about life without Freddie.' Well, complete bullshit. This is all about Freddie, and I think Live Aid is a good point to leave it. Who knows, there might be a sequel [laughs].
While Brian May laughs at the idea of a sequel, he does ultimately make the suggestion and while he says that Live Aid was the right place to leave the story of Bohemian Rhapsody, that wasn't the actual end of Queen or even Freddie Mercury, so there is technically more story to tell.
Having said that, Brian May completely discounts the claim that there was ever a plan for Freddie Mercury to die in the middle of Bohemian Rhapsody and for the remainder of the film to follow the living members of Queen after his death. The person that Brian May won't name to Louder is Sacha Baron Cohen, who had previously been attached to play Mercury. He says that part of the reason he left the project was because of a script that saw Mercury die in the middle of the story.
While Freddie Mercury doesn't die in the middle of Bohemian Rhapsody, any sequel to it would likely see the character pass away early in the story, so the character would probably die in the middle of the next film. Live Aid took place in 1985 and Mercury died in 1991 so if Mercury would survive a sequel until the end, the entire movie could only cover six years, while Bohemian Rhapsody covered a period more than twice that long.
Bohemian Rhapsody's success notwithstanding, a sequel seems unlikely. The movie covered most of the major aspects of Freddie's life as well as the best of Queen's music, even the songs that were chronologically out of order. There doesn't seem to be much left to do, though I suppose we'll have to wait and see to be truly sure.
