The Bohemian Rhapsody movie has been a tremendous commercial and critical success: It’s the highest grossing music biopic ever, and it won a fair share of Oscars too. That doesn’t mean the film is making Queen rich, through. In fact, Brian May said in a recent interview that the band hasn’t earned any money from the movie at all.
Speaking with Zoe Ball on BBC Radio 2’s The Zoe Ball Breakfast Show, May didn’t seem bitter about the band’s lack of profits from the film, but instead found it funny. He said:
“It was a long labor of love — about 12 years in development, I guess. We thought it would do well in the end and we felt good about it, but we didn’t realize it would do that well. It’s incredible around the world — it’s like a billion-dollar movie.
I had to laugh the other day, because there’s a thing in the paper saying that we were getting rich off this movie. If they only knew. We had an accountant in the other day, and we still haven’t earned a penny from it. Isn’t that funny? How successful does a movie have to be before you make money? There’s so many people that people don’t realize will take pieces off the top.”
He also praised the film’s portrayal of Freddie Mercury and Malek’s performance, saying, “I think Freddie comes out it with his dignity, but without having been whitewashed in any way. It’s very real. […] I think people are astounded how close to Freddie Rami [Malek] got. It’s phenomenal the way he got inside Freddie’s body somehow, inside his skin.”
Listen to the interview below.
