Brian May explains why Sacha Baron Cohen was dropped

Many people thought that the casting of Sacha Baron Cohen in the part of Freddie Mercury was a brilliant move.

He looks very much like Mercury and his ability to transform himself into anyone he wants seemed perfect for the picture.

That's why it came as such a surprise when Cohen dropped out of the picture, reportedly because he and Brian May and Roger Taylor of Queen couldn't see eye-to-eye on the direction of the film. Now, May has come out and told Classic Rock magazine what happened:

It's quite difficult to talk about because we owe Sacha a lot. He had so much enthusiasm for the project and it really helped us kick it into the start position. But in the end we felt that his presence in the movie would be very distracting.

What led us to that conclusion was the last three movies that he's made – The Dictator, Les Miserables and Hugo – in which he makes outstanding performances, but they're very much Sacha Baron Cohen performances. And we thought there has to be no distraction in the Freddie movie. You have to really suspend that disbelief – the man who plays Freddie, you have to really believe is Freddie. And we didn't think that could really happen with Sacha. That's not any criticism of his talent whatsoever, it's just a feeling that it was not going to work – that the pieces didn't fit together anymore.
So who is going to replace Cohen? Nobody has been named, however, Taylor says that they want Ben Whishaw who played Q in the movie Skyfall.

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