Between them, Creed II and Ralph Breaks the Internet have been gobbling up box office dollars all across the country – nay, the world – but there’s another movie that’s still holding its own, four and a half weeks after its initial launch.
Its name? Bohemian Rhapsody, Fox and Bryan Singer’s Dexter Fletcher’s music-powered biopic about the life and legacy of Freddie Mercury. The Queen frontman was a mercurial figure in his own right, and it’s fair to say that, at $539 million and counting, audiences have truly lapped up the movie magic – so much so, in fact, that Bohemian Rhapsody‘s domestic total of $164.4M has officially topped that of Straight Outta Compton ($161M) to become the biggest musical biopic of all time.
Indeed, this past weekend proved to be a double whammy for the wildly successful biopic, as earning $8.1M in its fifth weekend in North America was enough to push Bohemian Rhapsody past the $500M mark worldwide. And frankly, there aren’t many non-superhero movies that are able to claim they’ve crossed half a billion at the global box office.
Of course, Bohemian Rhapsody wasn’t without its fair share of controversy. Leading up to release, estranged director Bryan Singer walked out on the film’s production after his erratic behavior threatened to derail the entire project. In their time of need, 20th Century Fox and lead star Rami Malek turned to Dexter Fletcher to help shepherd Bohemian Rhapsody over the finish line, and while some deemed it to be a cursory exploration of Freddie Mercury’s life, the movie itself is still a cracking watch.
Select theaters are now playing Bohemian Rhapsody in all its glory, so there’s still time to catch Fox’s success story up on the big screen before it’s too late.
