Robbie Williams wants to make a sequel to Better Man.
The former Take That singer’s early years and struggles with fame are documented in the musical biopic and though it has performed poorly at the box office, the 50-year-old star is hopeful he will get the chance to make another movie because he still has a lot of stories to tell.
He told Australian DJ Sean Brown: “There is so much that didn’t make the movie. Only because we couldn’t fit it in — not because I was too embarrassed or ashamed to put it in… many stories. It would have had to be a five-hour film to fit everything in.
“And hopefully it does good and there is a Better Man 2.”
In the movie, Robbie is depicted by a CGI chimp but he was against the idea at first because he wanted to play himself.
He said: “I am an actor. I’ve acted at being a pop star for the last 30-plus years. It is what I do.”
The Angels hitmaker — who has Teddy, 12, Charlie, 10, Coco, six, and four-year-old Beau with wife Ayda Field — wasn’t afraid to address his struggles with addiction and mental health problems in the film, and his eldest child “sneaked in” to a screening of Better Man.
But Robbie believes seeing his struggles play out on the screen will have finally made Teddy understand that fame isn’t always a good thing.
He said: “She’s the child that wants to be famous the most — way more than I did. It’s terrifying.
“I tried to explain to her, ‘It doesn’t fix you’. But she won’t listen to me, of course.
“After the film, she was like, ‘Daddy, can I walk around the garden with you?’ And she held my hand and said, ‘I get it’.”
Director Michael Gracey previously insisted having Robbie depicted by a chimp was an obvious decision.
He told IndieWire: “I wanted to find a creatively interesting way into the story, but not for the sake of having a gimmick. I wanted to honour the way Rob sees himself. In the recordings we did over the course of a year and a half, he mentioned himself as a performing monkey time and time again.
“There was also a statement he made: Whatever age you get famous is the age you stop evolving. So, everything just pointed to the monkey.
“And on another level, I wanted to explore both his external and internal life.”
The filmmaker believes that having the former Take That star depicted as a chimp was better for the “fantastical” elements of the picture.
He said: “The thing is, if you do a musical, you are already starting in a place of heightened reality, having people break into song, which is more theatrical than real life.
“As long as you set that contract with the audience, they will go along with you. But if you add a monkey on top of that, it’s even more heightened and theatrical.”
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