Bohemian Rhapsody was one of those rare films that succeeded both as a box office hit and as an awards season darling. It became the most financially successful musical biopic to date when it was released, and it was nominated for several Oscars, and won some, including a Best Actor award for Rami Malek as Freddie Mercury. If this were any other movie, one would expect talk of a sequel just on principal, and simply because Bohemian Rhapsody seemed to tell the whole story, doesn't mean things have actually been any different.
Bohemian Rhapsody tells the story of the rise of Freddie Mercury and Queen from local band to global stardom, followed by a fall. It ends with the band reuniting at the historic Live Aid concert. While the film largely wraps up the story with some on screen text at the end, the story of the man and the band certainly doesn't end with Live Aid, and so a sequel is always possible. However, at this point, Queen guitarist and Bohemian Rhapsody producer Brian May doesn't expect a follow-up to happen, certainly not anytime soon. As May told Rolling Stone...
Don’t think we didn’t think about it. We’ve talked. Basically we think not, at the moment. Things could change, I suppose, but I think it would be difficult. I don’t think that would be an uplifting thing to do. I’m not saying it’s impossible because there is a great story there, but we don’t feel that’s the story we want to tell at the moment.
Considering the success of Bohemian Rhapsody, it's certainly no shock that the idea of a sequel has been seriously explored. At this point, however, we probably shouldn't expect it. The previous film ended on a high note with Queen coming together in what has gone down as one of the band's greatest performances. One assumes the sequel would have to end with the death of Freddie Mercury, and that certainly wouldn't make audiences feel quite the same way.
There's other reasons that a second movie is potentially difficult. Bohemian Rhapsody took some significant liberties with history, and a sequel would have to, one assumes, incorporate those changes into its story. This would then further change the real story in ways that might make a second film even less true to life and harder to say it was based on a true story.
Brian May does tell Rolling Stone "I think we should look somewhere else" rather than make a sequel, which implies that something might be on the way that is Queen related without being a direct sequel to Bohemian Rhapsody. Certainly, any sort of Queen related project has a real opportunity for success following the movie's success. Whatever Queen wants to do, the iron is hot now and will only be getting cooler as time goes on.
