The 2018 film may have been much-maligned but that hasn’t stopped it from earning Queen a tidy little profit.
As per NME, the group are getting a ludicrous £100,000 from the biopic every day. Every. Single. Day. As reported by Bang Showbiz, Companies House, Queen Productions had a turnover of £42 million in the 12 months dated to September 2020, with the band’s members making £19,179,528 pre-tax. Before the film came out, they reported £11.8 million before tax and a turnover of £21.9 million, so there’s been a significant increase.
The film wasn’t to everyone’s taste but Rami Malek did win the Best Actor at the Academy Awards for his portrayal of Queen icon Freddie Mercury, who sadly passed away in 1991. It also did astoundingly well at the box office, making over $900 million off a budget of just $50 million.
It’s the surviving members of the group (Brian May, Roger Taylor, and John Deacon) who are raking in the dough, though, earning £20.17 million between them since the film came out three years ago. It’s ironic too since May insisted at the time of the film’s release that it was “not a Queen movie, it’s a Freddie movie”.
“The whole deal was to do Freddie justice in a way that he would enjoy and would be worthy of him,” he said back then at the film’s premiere. “It’s all there, the humour is there, the talent is there, the heartbreak is there.
There’s a lot of tears and a lot of joy in this movie. So yes, it’s always Freddie. Freddie, Freddie, Freddie. Because this is the one chance we got to make the film about Freddie.” As long as Adam Lambert isn’t getting anything out of it, that’s fine by me.
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