Once upon a time there was a biopic about Queen frontman Freddie Mercury in the works starring Sacha Baron Cohen in the lead role, but that didn’t work out in the end.

For those wondering if that movie is still happening, it certainly is! Mr. Robot star Rami Malek is now playing Mercury in the movie, which is titled Bohemian Rhapsody. The first image of Malek in full costume was released yesterday, on what would have been Mercury’s 71st birthday, and you can check it out below.

We found out that Borat star Sacha Baron Cohen was going to play Freddie Mercury, the late great singer of the band Queen, back in 2010. But now, sadly, the actor has been forced to walk away from the project.

Cohen brought in two-time Academy Award nominee Peter Morgan (The Queen, Frost/Nixon) to write the script, and he had been looking for potential directors to take on the biopic. Unfortunately he could never find approval from the remaining members of Queen, who have final say on both the screenplay and director. According to sources, it was this same final say from Queen that also ultimately led to Cohen’s departure. While he was aiming to make a more mature, R-rated tell-all about Mercury, Queen seems determined for the movie to be a more family-friendly PG-rated biopic.

Today marks the day that 21 years ago the front man of the British rock group Queen, the irrepressibly colorful Freddie Mercury, succumbed to complications of AIDS. The band had carried on after the death of their singer, but it was never the same; the band had matched the intensity and sonic wallop to the eardrums its singer vocally postulated, and was one of those lighting in a bottle, one of a kind situations, ala a Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, The Doors, The Who, and The Beatles (many of those bands acting as an influence to Queen). Mercury’s death created a void in rock/pop music for all time and also set a standard for singing excellence for all time as well.

Mercury was gifted with a vocal range that reached untold galaxies; he had perfected the term bombast, as Queen’s self-indulgent musical posturing never sunk them, largely in part to A) the ferocity and flowery he/she kind of style manifested by Mercury, with his boldness on stage, and his flamboyance somewhere in the middle of Marc Bolan and Elton John and B) the fact that they were mainly the only band engaging in a kind of theater rock/cabaret progressive (in the early days of the band’s career) style, which ultimately became their instant trademark.

Metal Hammer in the UK reported today that the rock group Queen is going to have a special performance commemorating the tenth anniversary of the musical We Will Rock You, which is based on the quartet, and as an added “bonus”, will have a holographic image of their late singer Freddie Mercury, accompanying them.

Guitarist and co-founder of the group Brian May confirmed the news to BBC Television in England, telling them that “It’s a little unfortunate that they did that thing with Tupac as we’ve been trying to make Freddie appear on the stage for quite a while.” May was referring to the guest “appearance” made by a Tupac Shakur hologram at the Coachella Festival, held here in America last month. May also went on to state that the Mercury hologram would not sport the same technology used to bring Tupac to eerie life on stage, but Mercury’s effect would be achieved as an “optical illusion of sorts.”

The MP3 album deal of the day over at Amazon today is Queen‘s Greatest Hits for only $4.99.

This hits album contains 17 awesome tunes from the classic rock band’s extensive back catalog, making this sale a steal! This is the first greatest hits volume and contains the most popular songs like “Bohemian Rhapsody,” “We Will Rock You,” and “Another One Bites The Dust.”

If you’d like a physical copy of Greatest Hits, the CD is available for only $9.99. There’s also a 2-CD set, Queen: Greatest Hits I & II, that’s $15.52.

For the band’s 40 anniversary, they released Queen 40 Limited Edition Collector’s Box Set, which is a 10-disc set that contains the band’s first five studio albums remastered in deluxe reissue editions with rare bonus material all in one collectible box with a 24 panel poster. Albums included are Queen, Queen II, Sheer Heart Attack, A Night At the Opera, and A Day At the Races. There’s also the Queen 40 Limited Edition Collector’s Box Set Volume 2, which is available exclusively through Amazon that contains deluxe remastered editions of the albums News of the World, Jazz, The Game, Flash Gordon, and Hot Space.