frankie say comeback

The story of a sexy song & homoerotic music video—too hot for ’80s airwaves—is headed to the big screen

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A leather-clad gay man smokes a cigarette and waits outside the door of an S&M club.
Image Credit: “Relax” Music Video, Universal Music Operations Limited

Queer ’80s band Frankie Goes To Hollywood is going to Hollywood with a new biopic and an exciting young star!

Formed by lead vocalist Holly Johnson, the band broke through in a big way in 1983 with their debut single, “Relax.” And now their story will be told on the big screen in a film called Relax, from filmmaker Bernard Rose—who happened to direct the hit song’s original video.

The news comes from Deadline, which also reports the biopic has found its lead: Queer actor Callum Scott Howells, who made quite the impression with his first-ever screen role in It’s A Sin.

Howells, of course, will play Johnson, the flamboyant frontman of the band, whose 1994 autobiography A Bone In My Flute serves as the basis for the film. The musician penned the memoir after he was diagnosed with HIV in ’91, believing he would not survive.

The actor shared the news on social media, commenting that he’s “excited and honored” to step into the role, welcoming audiences to the “pleasuredome” (a reference to the band’s first album).

Frankie Frankly, this is all very exciting. From the jump, Johnson and his band stirred up controversy and relied heavily on queer and overtly sexual imagery, making them important, boundary-pushing figures for the LGBTQ+ community in the ’80s.

For example, in their first major television appearance in the U.K., Frankie Goes To Hollywood performed in fetish wear. They took a similar approach for their “Relax” music video, which was set at an S&M club and featured all sorts of leather-clad dancers.

(“Relax” walked so that Sam Smith and Kim Petras‘ “Unholy” video could run.)

And that’s to say nothing of the song’s lyrics, which are pretty obviously about sex and the male org*sm. Or the savvy promotional campaign around the track, for that matter, which popularized the iconic “FRANKIE SAY RELAX” shirts and featured images of Johnson in a sailor’s cap accompanied by the phrase, “ALL THE NICE BOYS LOVE SEA MEN.”

So, yeah, these guys weren’t subtle. And that’s exactly why we love them. And also why The BBC initially banned “Relax” from radio play.

Related:

5 homoerotic music videos that were too hot for the censors to handle

Cheers to the artists who live provocatively and embrace sexuality, and may the art ahead of us be even wilder than these.

Of course, there was plenty of controversy within the band, too. Like the fact that, despite working on various versions of “Relax” with his bandmates, Johnson wound up arranging an electronic version of the song that didn’t feature them at all—and that’s the one that became a headline-making hit. They would part ways after the release of their second album just a few years later.

Which is all to say that there’s plenty of material for the Relax biopic to be rather dramatic.

Coincidentally (or perhaps not), the original members of the band reunited for the first time in over 35 years this past week, performing their song “Welcome To The Pleasuredome” in Liverpool as part of the celebration for the Eurovision Song Contest.

FRANKIE SAY COMEBACK, baby!

Relax will be produced by Working Title and Independent Entertainment, and is set to shop for distributors at the Cannes Film Festival. Additional cast and a release date have yet to be announced, but the film is expected to go into production later this year.

Related:

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