‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ Cracks List of Year’s Top 10 Grossing Movies
The Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody just secured another landmark achievement as it became the ninth biggest grossing movie of the year.
It had already become the world’s most successful music biopic of all time, and had fueled both album chart and singles chart success for Queen. Box Office Mojo reports that the movie has cracked the $600 million mark, with a domestic take of $175 million and an overseas total of $428 million since it opened on Nov. 2.
The film now stands at $603.7 million, $19 million below the movie currently No. 8 on the list, Ant-Man and the Wasp. The year's top earner, Avengers: Infinity War, has logged more than $2 billion worldwide.
Bohemian Rhapsody secured two Golden Globes nominations last week, in the categories of Best Motion Picture - Drama and Best Actor in a Motion Picture - Drama. The latter nod was for Rami Malek’s portrayal of Freddie Mercury, which has also led to speculation about an Oscar nomination.
Malek recently said he'd have loved to "tack on another hour" to the film's running time and "fill in a few gaps." "You have to shine a light on certain aspects of his life, to show how defiant he was as an artist and what stereotypes he destroyed," he noted.
"He, and the band, they brought down every convention of what music should be and how human beings should act in public. He's a revolutionary in that he just refused to be segregated or marginalized in any way. I know there's always going to be polarizing aspects to this film. There's no way around it. You can do the other version of this film, but we needed to focus on a finite period of time.”
The movie’s unexpected success, from a Fox production budget of $55 million, seems certain to inspire a number of similar biopics. Universal Pictures recently began working on a movie about Prince, though it’s likely to be a fictional story inspired by his music. The Motley Crue biopic The Dirt will be released on March 22, while the Elton John story, Rocketman, arrives on May 17.