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by Tippi Blevins June 10, 2008 11:38 AM

Simon Napier-Bell's movie about '80s pop duo Wham! may be in trouble, according to The Guardian. No, you didn't read that wrong. There is, indeed a movie about Wham! in the works. But the film's future hangs in the balance until George Michael consents to the use of the group's music.

According to the article, Napier-Bell "raised doubts" over whether that would happen. A Wham! movie without Wham! music would be like... Do you remember that scene in Amadeus where the performers are dancing around like idiots in silence because Ferris Bueller's principal prohibited music?* Now imagine how much sillier the "Wake Me Up Before You Go Go" video would have looked if it had been performed by spastic mimes. Ferris Bueller's principal (aka Emperor Joseph II) eventually saw the error of his ways, but will George Michael?

Napier-Bell, who managed the duo, says the movie would focus on "the band's heyday from 1983 to 1985." Wham! didn't stick together for long, but apparently a couple of years is all you need for a "lavish chronicle of the hedonistic pop duo." On Napier-Bell's own website, he describes a business-like George Michael who, even in the early days, was very focused on the bottom line. Here's some business for Michael to mull over: The film has a budget of £50m. That's almost $100 million bucks, for those of us in the States. It boggles the mind that a Wham! movie could cost so much. (How much do peroxide and a case of those "Choose Life" T-shirts cost? Are they constructing an animatronic Andrew Ridgeley for when the real thing busies himself surfing?) But it seems like any savvy businessman would want a chunk of that, in case he ever got arrested again for being, you know, "hedonistic."

*In real life, Emperor Joseph II had banned ballet, not music. But whatever. It was a movie, not Austrian History 101.

TAGS: Amadeus, Andrew Ridgeley, Ferris Bueller, George Michael, Simon Napier-Bell, Wham!

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