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Mercury's surviving band mates – guitarist Brian May and drummer Roger Taylor – are both on board as musical consultants and were given script and director approval over the biopic on celebrated lead singer Mercury. American website Deadline is reporting that Cohen has now pulled out. It claims that the comedian wanted to make a grittier film than the band intended, for a film tracking the build up to the band's memorable performance at Live Aid in 1985.

The Cambridge-educated performer found international fame with his 2003 film Ali G Indahouse, in which he played the oafish, rap-obsessed caricature of urban youth Ali G

His subsequent films Borat, about a witless Kazakh visitor to the US, and Bruno, in which he pretended to be gay Austrian fashion presenter – were huge Box Office successes on both sides of the Atlantic.

There were plans for the screenplay of the Mercury biopic to be written by Peter Morgan, who has previously worked on Frost/Nixon.