Freddie Mercury Illusion To Appear At ‘We Will Rock You’ 10th Anniversary In London

Robbie Daw | May 11, 2012 8:07 am

A special 10th anniversary performance of Queen‘s West End musical We Will Rock You will likely have attendees thinking they’ve seen a ghost. Guitarist Brian May revealed that band’s late frontman Freddie Mercury will appear on stage in the London production on May 14, though it’s not going to be a hologram — rather, the image will be “an optical illusion of sorts.”

“People will come out saying, ‘did we actually see Freddie?'” May told the BBC.

He also acknowledged that Dr. Dre beat Queen to the punch at Coachella last month, when Tupac Shakur virtually appeared to perform two songs on stage, and subsequently became the biggest story to emerge out of the California festival this year.

“It’s a little unfortunate they did that thing with Tupac as we’ve been trying to make Freddie appear on the stage for quite a while,” May said. “[That technique] is something we’ve looked at ourselves but I think probably for a show that runs eight shows a week it’s not really quite practical.”

By not practical, he likely means not affordable. The Tupac projection alone — which lasted for about eight minutes — cost somewhere in the ballpark of $100,000 to $400,000.

But who knows — maybe what once seemed impossible is now suddenly doable, and we’ll all be seeing Adam Lambert and Freddie Mercury on stage together?