The documentary has been developed by same excellent team behind last year’s hugely successful documentary “Queen: Days of Our Lives” which ran on the BBC. “The Great Pretender” presents a compelling insight unearthing previously undiscovered or rarely seen footage of Queen and Freddie Mercury. This is also the for the first time available in Hi-Def.
“The Great Pretender” is produced and directed by Rhys Thomas, life-long Queen fan and expert (to the extent that Rhys famously broke the Mastermind all time record points score with a specialist subject of Queen). Rhys has this time turned his attention to the Freddie archive, going back as early as 1976 in search of vintage gems which reveal more than ever before the inside story of Freddie’s life and career and the solo projects he worked on outside of Queen.
“The Great Pretender” documentary has extensive archive footage from rare interviews with the press-shy Freddie, concerts, video shoots and personal material, much of it being seen for the first time, along with newly filmed contributions from fellow Queen members Brian May and Roger Taylor, Queen manager Jim Beach, soprano Montserrat Caballé, composers David Arnold and Mike Moran, lyricist Tim Rice, comedian and lifelong fan Matt Lucas and many more.
There are some amazing firsts for this release, one of which is Freddie & Rod Stewart singing their demo for “Take Another Piece of My Heart”, an unreleased song from 1984, a snippet of the unreleased Michael Jackson / Freddie Mercury collaboration “There Must Be More To Life Than This”, and Freddie with the Royal Ballet 1979.
“The Great Pretender” documentary also has some funny outtakes from the video shoots for “I Want To Break Free”, “One Vision”, “Days of Our Lives”, “I Want It All”, “A Kind Of Magic”, “Princes of the Universe”, “Living on My Own”, Born To Love You”, “Great Pretender”, “Made In Heaven”, and “Who Wants to Live Forever” as well as other bonus features which will not be shown on any TV releases.
Visit http://www.freddiemercury.com/ for details.