Wikileaks Sony Emails: "Untitled Freddie Mercury/Queen Film

Searched for "Freddie Mercury" in the recently uploaded leaks of Sony's files on the Wikileaks site, and lo and behold, there are emails that discuss "Untitled Freddie Mercury/Queen Film (aka "Bohemian Rhapsody"). The link is here, and here's what I believe to be the main email with all of the messages.  

Any new information here? 

Email-ID52772Date2014-03-05 22:37:[email protected][email protected], [email protected][email protected], [email protected]: "Untitled Freddie Mercury/Queen Film (aka "Bohemian Rhapsody")/ GK SubmissionIt’s net.. it’s in the budget pdf attachment  From: Minghella, Hannah
Sent: Wednesday, March 05, 2014 2:37 PM
To: Pascal, Amy; Gumpert, Andrew
Cc: Belgrad, Doug; Giannetti, Andrea
Subject: Re: "Untitled Freddie Mercury/Queen Film (aka "Bohemian Rhapsody")/ GK Submission Are we sure the new number isn't a gross number?  From: Pascal, AmySent: Wednesday, March 5, 2014 2:35 PMTo: Gumpert, AndrewCc: Belgrad, Doug; Minghella, Hannah; Giannetti, AndreaSubject: Re: "Untitled Freddie Mercury/Queen Film (aka "Bohemian Rhapsody")/ GK Submission ME TOOOn Mar 5, 2014, at 2:32 PM, Gumpert, Andrew wrote:

I believe we were discussing 35m budget cap last go around. From: Pascal, Amy 
Sent: Wednesday, March 05, 2014 2:24 PM
To: Belgrad, Doug; Minghella, Hannah; Giannetti, Andrea; Gumpert, Andrew
Subject: Fwd: "Untitled Freddie Mercury/Queen Film (aka "Bohemian Rhapsody")/ GK Submission Was this the number he agreed to

Begin forwarded message:From: "Galston, Jay" <[email protected]>
Date: March 5, 2014 at 12:15:57 PM PST
To: "Gumpert, Andrew" <[email protected]>, "Pascal, Amy" <[email protected]>, "Belgrad, Doug" <[email protected]>, "DeLuca, Michael" <[email protected]>, "Minghella, Hannah" <[email protected]>, "Giannetti, Andrea" <[email protected]>
Cc: "Litt, Stefan" <[email protected]>, "Davis, Andy" <[email protected]>, "Rifkin, Michael" <[email protected]>
Subject: RE: "Untitled Freddie Mercury/Queen Film (aka "Bohemian Rhapsody")/ GK SubmissionAttached is the current model, updated for the $46.9M net budget.  At Jeff’s target of $50M DBO / $50M IBO (which he gave in December), we’re showing $2.5M of profit, which is ($24M) below the Return Threshold.  To hit the threshold, we would need to be at 70/70, assuming similar marketing numbers. I know GK’s co-financing was a possibility, so we also ran a 50/50 co-fi version under those terms, which looks slightly better at $5.3M of profit, but is still well short of the Return Threshold.  For both cases, we’re running Return Threshold on SPE’s share only (net of pre-sales and co-fi investments). GK notes in their submission that they intend to sell UK.  We don’t have any details for what they think they might get, so we are assuming the sale is for 10% of budget, and we get overages after a 20% fee. GK’s deal is also still in discussion.  This version of the model includes the last incarnation we ran.  The other participations are per their submission. Please let me know if you have any questions/comments. -Jay Jay GalstonMotion Picture Business Development | Sony Pictures Entertainment 
10202 West Washington Blvd | Culver City, CA 90232 
(310) 244-2200 | [email protected] From: Gumpert, Andrew 
Sent: Tuesday, March 04, 2014 4:38 PM
To: Pascal, Amy; Belgrad, Doug; DeLuca, Michael; Minghella, Hannah; Giannetti, Andrea
Cc: Galston, Jay; Litt, Stefan; Davis, Andy
Subject: FW: "Untitled Freddie Mercury/Queen Film (aka "Bohemian Rhapsody")/ GK Submission Fyi, submission in. We will re-run the #’s so we have then up to date. 46.9m budget, including 2.5m contingency. From: Julie Roach [mailto:[email protected]] 
Sent: Tuesday, March 04, 2014 4:21 PM
To: Gumpert, Andrew; Burkin, Brian; Steinberg, David
Subject: "Untitled Freddie Mercury/Queen Film (aka "Bohemian Rhapsody")/ GK Submission Hi Andrew, Brian and David, Below and attached please find the revised and updated Submission on the Freddie Mercury Project.  ELEMENTS: (i) Title:  Current working title “Bohemian Rhapsody.  The Story of Freddie Mercury & Queen”. (ii) Script: please see ATTACHED. (iii)  All-in Budget: please see ATTACHED. (iv)  Director:  Dexter Fletcher.  (iv)  Principal actors:Actor playing “Freddie”:  Ben WhishawActor playing “Roger Taylor”:  Johnny FlynnActress playing “Mary Austin”:  Gemma Arterton (v) All other currently existing attachments: Producer: Graham KingProducer: Jim BeachExecutive Producer: Jane RosenthalScreenwriters: Peter Morgan; Stephen Rivele & Christopher Wilkinson; Joe PehnallLife Story Rights:  Queen Films Ltd, grant of life story rights of Freddie Mercury, Brian May, John Deacon, Roger Taylor; and band manager Jim Beach.Crew heads: please see ATTACHED list of attached crew members. (vi) Schedule of third party participations: please see ATTACHED.(Please note there are no changes to the previous summary emailed to you on 12/4/2013 – but attached again for your convenience). (vii)  Chain of title: previously forwarded. (viii) Proposed schedule of commencement:  May 26, 2014 (ix) Rating: R, but t.b.d. (x) GK territories:  GK anticipates se

Another email:

MERCURY
Freddie will be a hero to all the misfit millenials we heard from at that seminar, real chance at cross demo action BUT

Hard to proceed with three strikes:

TOO HIGH A BUDGET

PEDESTRIAN SCRIPT

QUESTIONABLE DIRECTOR

If we can eliminate budget issue and improve script, I’d roll the dice

Source: 
https://wikileaks.org/sony/emails/emailid/16810

And another one--sorry, sifting through them myself. Direct link here.

Email-ID61202Date2014-01-24 15:11:21
From
[email protected]
To
[email protected]

MERCURY

I'm starting a set of page notes, but here are the big thoughts I had on the new draft of MERCURY:

It's certainly a step up, but the new draft suffers from a lot of the same problems as the last draft. I think we should care most about Freddie's relationship with his band mates. That relationship sometimes plays second fiddle to his relationship with Mary, and Mary's relationship with Freddie is one of unconditional love so it feels undramatic compared to the band. We need to see how the band fulfills Freddie emotionally - how they are his family - so that we really feel the tension and the tragedy as Freddie's ego and Prenter pull him away from them. We can also feel that tension in his relationship with Mary, but that can be secondary. The climax of the movie is the Live Aid performance, but since we have that set up in the first few seconds of the movie, we have to be feeling like there's a chance we'll never make it to the Live Aid concert (even though we know we will) if Freddie keeps self-destructing throughout the movie.

Prenter enters too late and never feels like enough of a villain. He should introduce Freddie to coke earlier and be a wedge between Freddie and the band from the moment that he arrives. 

In the first third of the script, I'm never really sure of exactly what level of fame Queen is at, which is important to us as an audience so that we feel like we're along for the ride. Maybe he needs to do another performance in the first act to help us gauge how they're doing as a band (by seeing if it's a nice venue or not, audience size).

Do you have the PDF they are talking about? Could you find it?

"He should introduce Freddie to coke earlier and be a wedge between Freddie and the band from the moment that he arrives."

I've never been excited about this project and bollocks like this makes me even more suspicious.

Wow, great scoop.

very interesting, thanks!

Great find, best post on QZ all April.

I'm still digging in there, and maybe others can as well. There doesn't seem to be PDF attachments included in the emails, at least at first glance.

Basically, I went to Wikileaks and searched for "Freddie Mercury." Other search terms--Graham King, Sacha Baron Cohen--might yield more results.

Johnny Flynn as Roger is a pretty good call. Can see the likeness, though he's younger than Roger was in 1985.

http://coolspotters.com/musicians/johnny-flynn

Daniel Nester wrote:

I'm still digging in there, and maybe others can as well. There doesn't seem to be PDF attachments included in the emails, at least at first glance.

Yeah for the second dump, WikiLeaks removed the attachments (Which included whole movies and screen tests) and just produced the emails. It's probably possible to find the pdf's in the first dump which has all the files, but I've no idea how. One of the issues for those looking at the original leak was the lack of searchability which is why they dumped them in a different format this time.

EDIT: It appears the documents may be there too, but filed separately from the emails. I cant figure out a way to view them on the site. Tried the documents search filtered for PDF's and get nothing Mercury related.

I've never seen a good (non-documentary) film about anything like this. Most of the Beatle/Lennon movies are kind of laughable. I kind of hope the Mercury film never comes to fruition, though perhaps it can be an exception among bad and pointless biopics. The discussion of fine tuning the plot here definitely indicates that they care about having strong character arcs and the like - this leads us to something of a dilemma. As has been pointed out, it means tweaking real life events to maximise drama and pacing rather than truthfulness. This is a definite shame when it results in grievous misrepresentations of people and events, however if it is used in moderation in order to craft a great film at the occasional expense of certain real life details, then I'm honestly all for it.

Good points about the pitfalls of biopics. There are definitely bad ones out there, or ones that play fast and loose with the historical record. Sometimes when this is done it works to help tell the story in a more efficient way, and other times it's just for more hacky reasons. I think some biopics like The Social Network or Goodfellas plays with real scenes and makes something new. People do complain about historical inaccuracies in those movies, but they're still regarded as good films, win Oscars and all that. There there are ones like The Imitation Game or the Steve Jobs movie that do it just because they don't know what they're doing. I mean, Ed Wood is great, and so is Coal Miner's Daughter. What the great ones have in common are great performances, and Ben Wishaw is pretty great. Has anyone seen the BBC show The Hour? It was billed at first as the English Mad Men, because it's set in post-WWII, but it's different. And Ben Wishaw is pretty great in it. He's not just the new Q dude in the James Bond movies, although I bet that pays his bills. Wishaw is a great actor. I'm actually way more excited now that he's cast in the lead. Would have loved to have seen the screen test!

Nice find. The cast seems okay and I do hope this film will come into fruition. Disagree with those dismissing biopics as pointless, boring etc. Off the top of my head - Control, Walk the Line, Ray - don't see anything wrong with these films. Obviously, no movie will ever satisfy everyone, especially when it comes to iconic music figures, but I think a good biopic might serve as an introduction into the artist's life and music. Films like the aforementioned Social Network or Good Fellas fall into a different category for me, although both are great.

tomchristie22 wrote:

I've never seen a good (non-documentary) film about anything like this.

Even with all it's flaws The Buddy Holly Story is pretty good.