Sacha Baron Cohen has been confirmed as playing Freddie Mercury in a upcoming Queen biopic, according to the band’s manager Jim Beach. Beach, who has managed the band since 1978, made the announcement on Thursday night at the Artist & Management Awards at London's Troxy.

Sacha Baron Cohen Sacha Baron Cohen will play Freddie Mercury.

Along with starring as the band’s iconic frontman, Cohen will reportedly also be producing, writing and directing the film, according to the Daily Mail.

“You have probably followed the saga of the famous Queen-Freddie Mercury biopic which has been developing in Hollywood for the last seven years,” Beech told the audience on Thursday.

“An important breakthrough is that we have now managed to persuade Sacha Baron Cohen to write, produce and direct this movie, and he has also agreed to star.”

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Cohen had been previously linked to the project, but had dropped out in 2013 reportedly citing ‘creative differences’. The problems were said to have steamed from Mercury’s bandmates Brian May and Roger Taylor feeling that Cohen was not the right choice to play the frontman.

“In the end, we felt that his presence in the movie would be very distracting. What led us to that conclusion was the last three movies that he's made - The Dictator, Les Miserables and Hugo, in which he makes outstanding performances, but they're very much Sacha Baron Cohen performances" guitarist Brian May told Classic Rock magazine in a 2013 interview.

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“We thought there has to be no distraction in the Freddie movie. You have to really suspend that disbelief – the man who plays Freddie, you have to really believe is Freddie. And we didn't think that could really happen with Sacha.”

“That's not any criticism of his talent whatsoever, it's just a feeling that it was not going to work – that the pieces didn't fit together anymore,” May added.

But now Cohen and Mercury’s former bandmates are back on the same page, the long awaited film should hopefully soon be able to begin development. Currently Cohen is working on comedy Grimsby, where he stars as the football hooligan brother of an MI5 agent. Grimsby is due for release in February 2016.