Weird Al Yankovic Reveals Bohemian Rhapsody Inspired Him to Make His Own Biopic

By Russ Burlingame

The influence of melodramatic music biopics on Weird: The Al Yankovic Story is pretty clear, but in a new interview, Yankovic singles out one in particular as the movie that made him think it was worth taking his shot. That movie? Bohemian Rhapsody, the Queen biopic from X-Men director Bryan Singer and executive producer Dexter Fletcher (Rocketman). The movie, which won four Oscars, was nevertheless criticized for the broad liberties it took with the life of Freddy Mercury and the story of the band at its center. It seems as though it's exactly that combination of being very, very wrong and very, very popular that piqued "Weird" Al's interest in the first place.

Eric Appel, who directed Weird, had originally made a joke trailer for the project in 2009. Published to comedy website Funny or Die, the video went viral -- which is exactly what it was designed to do. Appel admits that all his joke trailers hid a desire to catch some attention and maybe make a real movie, but he didn't imagine this would or could be the one that took off.

"For the longest time, I thought, 'It is what it is: It's a Funny or Die viral video,'" Yankovic told TheWrap. "I showed it in my live concerts for about a decade, 'cause I do a lot of costume changes on stage, and it always got a huge reaction. And after shows, people would be like, 'When's the movie coming out? This sounds amazing.' And I'd have to explain how it's just a bit. It wasn't until about three years ago that out of the blue I emailed Eric and said, 'I think it might be time.' 'Cause Bohemian Rhapsody had come out – famously not accurate in a lot of ways, but it won a lot of awards and is very, very popular. And I thought, it's time to puncture the biopic genre once again."

Yankovic's previous attempt at a feature film, 1989's UHF, has become a cult classic in the years since its release, but at the time, it didn't play at the box office. A loose story that connected a series of parodies, homages, and comedy sketches, UHF centered on George Newman (Yankovic), who took over a failing local TV channel that his morally-dubious uncle won in a poker game. The movie also starred Michael Richards, David Bowe, Victoria Jackson, Fran Drescher, Gedde Watanabe, and Kevin McCarthy.

Here's the official synopsis for Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, which is currently available to stream on Roku TV. You can buy the Blu-ray, but it's exclusive to the Australian region, unless you're playing the 4K UHD, which is region-free.

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