Entertainment

Photo: Contributed - BANG Showbiz

A Freddie Mercury biopic will be released in early 2014.

Brian May confirmed filming for the motion picture - which will tell the story of the late Queen singer's formative years leading up to the group's 1985 Live Aid gig - will begin in the spring following a number of setbacks, with 'Borat' star Sacha Baron Cohen still in line to portray the legendary singer in the movie.

In a post on his official website, Brian wrote: "I promised news of yesterday's Queen band meeting. Well, it was just Roger [Taylor] and Jim Beach and myself ... we are a small cottage industry !! Our main agenda was the Freddie film ... which, I'm happy to tell you, is on course. Much of our discussion was about contractual things ... it's pretty complex .... and determining who is responsible for what.

"The pieces are all falling into place, though we are now on a slightly later schedule - filming is now scheduled to start in the Spring, with Sacha Baron Cohen playing Freddie. The film should be ready for release early in 2014. (sic)"

Brian insists Freddie - who passed away in 1991 - will be "wryly smiling somewhere" at the thought of a movie based on his life being created.

He wrote: "We did make some other plans, but they will have to stay under wraps for now. Being in Queen is - bizarrely - as full of surprising twists and turns as ever - 40 years since we first got together, and 20 years after losing Freddie. But of course Freddie is in so many ways very much alive. He must be wryly smiling somewhere !!! (sic)"

Brian previously announced in September 2010 that Sacha had been chosen to play Freddie in a movie about his life.

Oscar-nominated screenwriter Peter Morgan - who was behind 'The Queen' and 'Frost/Nixon' screenplays - will pen the script and the film is being co-produced by Robert DeNiro's TriBeCa Productions.