Sacha Cohen Baron WON'T BE Starring, Writing, Directing, and Producing the Freddie Mercury Biopic After All

The Queen's the band manager Jim Beach on Thursday night, March 26, at the Artist & Management Awards at London's Troxy used his acceptance speech for the Peter Grant award for outstanding achievement to announce: "You have probably followed the saga of the famous Queen-Freddie Mercury biopic which has been developing in Hollywood for the last seven years. An important breakthrough is that we have now managed to persuade Sacha Baron Cohen to write, produce, and direct this movie, and he has also agreed to star." Apparently, he was only joking.

In fact, Brian May, 67, renowned astrophysicist and the Queen guitarist on his blog clarified that what Beach said was really just a "small joke" but "I'm afraid some folks might have taken it seriously!"

A biopic about Queen frontman Freddie Mercury who died in 1991 at the age of 45 due to complications from AIDS, has been in the works for nearly seven years. Cohen left the project back in 2013 over "creative differences" with the late singer's surviving bandmates who feel audiences would not be able to separate Cohen's wild public persona from the real Freddie Mercury.

On Cohen's departure from the Freddie Mercury biopic the project, May back then said: "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,' Brian said at the time. 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 - we didn't think that could really happen with Sacha." Fellow surviving Queen member Roger Taylor, 65, shared the sentiment, saying then, "We didn't want it to be a joke. We want people to be moved." Although known for his flamboyant stage personality, Mercury was shy and retiring when not performing, rarely even agreeing to do interviews.