While you hearken to Better Man director Michael Gracey converse in regards to the challenges of pulling off one in all his movie's most advanced numbers, you understand it's a miracle it got here collectively in any respect.

For the Robbie Williams musical biopic's rendition of "Rock DJ," the Britpop star's 2000 hit tune, Gracey deliberate to close down Regent Road, one in all London's busiest vacationer hotspots, for 4 nights. His envisioned sequence concerned 500 dancers; choreographed cameras, buses, taxis, and motorized scooters; pogo sticks; costume adjustments; and a section involving an enormous bubble gum machine he needed to tug off since making 2017's The Greatest Showman (seen within the clip above).

"The quantity of occasions we went down there at 3 within the morning and danced down the road with our iPhones and having drunk individuals yelling at us, 'Is that for TikTok?!'" Gracey recollects, mimicking the belligerent catcallers. "It was such a buildup to that quantity. There was a lot preparation that went into it."

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The "Rock DJ" sequence occurs pretty early in Higher Man, which tracks the lifetime of Williams however portrays him as a monkey. Williams, sporting a performance-capture go well with, performs himself as a primate as an grownup, however for the Regent Road quantity, these duties fell to Jonno Davies, who performs the monkey-fied Williams as a youthful man. The tune drops as soon as Williams and his bandmates of the '90s group Take That land a document deal and hit the streets to rejoice.

Gracey couldn't rehearse the sequence instantly on Regent Road. That may have price further cash they didn't should shut down the companies and foot site visitors. "We had to enter an enormous studio house and actually tape out every part of Regent Road that we have been going to be dancing down — each bus cease, each curb, each garbage bin," the filmmaker says. "We needed to do a one-to-one rehearsal in order that we might work out the place everybody was going to be at what level within the music."

The plan was to go proper from that week of rehearsal into filming the primary of 4 nights on location to maintain the strikes contemporary in his workforce's minds. After which! "After we acquired to the tip of the week, a producer got here as much as me and stated, 'The Queen died final night time. We're not taking pictures,'" Gracey recollects. "We acquired shut down actually the day earlier than we have been about to begin filming."

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Queen Elizabeth II died on Sep. 8, 2022, on the age of 96. As is customary within the U.Ok., sure occasions needed to transpire. "There's nothing you possibly can say. It's 10 days of mourning, then they’d the funeral, then they’d the coronation," Gracey lists. "It took us one other 5 months to get again onto Regent Road. And simply so you recognize, there's no insurance coverage for the loss of life of the Queen. We needed to go and lift that cash once more. Individuals on the manufacturing facet have been like, 'Effectively, you don't actually want that quantity.' I'm like, 'No, no, no. We positively want this quantity.'"

And they also did. They raised the funds once more to pay the retailers to close down, they dusted off the psychological cobwebs on the choreography, and went to work. Suffice it to say, Gracey provides, "Regent Road was positively probably the most nerve-racking of the musical numbers."

You’ll be able to see the absolutely realized musical sequence in theaters in the present day as Higher Man expands nationwide.