Ever since it was announced that a Robbie Williams biopic with a CGI monkey in the lead role was in the works, we’ve had all kinds of questions. Namely, “what?”, “how” and “what?” again.
Well, on Wednesday afternoon, our questions were kind of answered with the arrival of the first trailer for Better Man.
The minute-long trailer recreates some of Robbie’s biggest moments, including his early years growing up in Stoke-On Trent, his big wins at the Brit Awards and his iconic performance at Knebworth.
And yes, all of this is done with a CGI monkey at the centre of the action.
Intrigued? Us too. Take a look below:
Better Man is helmed by Michael Gracey, best known for directing the record-breaking movie musical The Greatest Showman.
He told Deadline earlier this year that the film arose after a series of interviews he conducted with the award-winning singer.
“To be honest, when we first started, it wasn’t necessarily for a film,” he explained. “I just wanted to capture him in his own voice telling his story because I found it so compelling.
“The majority of the recordings in the film, the voiceover is from those recordings. Then I started taking those and chopping them together, almost like a radio play, just to see if I could form a narrative that spanned the length of a film that would keep me engaged, just purely if I shut my eyes and listened to it.”
He continued: “I was like, ‘I just don’t want to do another Bohemian Rhapsody or Rocketman musical biopic’, at least from the point of view in which they were approached. I just felt there was a more creative way of entering into this particular story.
“So I went back to those recordings, and when I was listening to them, I found Rob saying often that he was just dragged up to perform, like a monkey, or it didn’t really matter. He was just up the back performing like a monkey. And he said it enough times that I was like, ‘Oh, that’s how he sees himself. He literally sees himself as a performing monkey’. And I thought, ‘That would be amazing; I would love to see that film’.
“That’s where the idea came from,” he added.
Better Man hits UK cinemas on Boxing Day.
