On September 22, 2003, Queen's Brian May and Roger Taylor joined pop superstars Beyoncé, Britney Spears and Pink in Rome to film one of the most iconic adverts ever conceived.
Directed by Tarsem Singh, who had previously directed R.E.M.'s video for Losing My Religion (and would later work with Lady Gaga on the video for 911), Pepsi's high-concept ad imagined the three pop stars as gladiators forced to fight one another in a Roman coliseum for the perverted gratification of a capricious emperor, played by Spanish pop star Enrique Iglesias.
Before a single blow is cast, however, the warrior queens have a different idea, and throw down their weapons, deciding that rather than serving up violence for the emperor and the baying Roman public, they will instead serenade their audience with a fierce reworking of Queen's timeless anthem We Will Rock You, get the crowd on their side, and subsequently put their tormentor in a spot of lion-based bother.
And who could fault their decision?
When Rolling Stone analysed the ad for a 2023 feature on its making, they revealed that the first five rows of spectators in the coliseum - including Brian May and Roger Taylor - were shot live on set in Rome, while the remainder of the 50,000 'Romans' in the stands were CGI, based on images taken of fifty extras.
“What a weird deal that was," Pink reflected to People magazine that same year. "What the hell? Like, what are we doing?
"Also, you’re Pepsi. You’re flying us to Rome to shoot in a fake coliseum down the street from the real Colosseum. Why are we here? We could have gone to Canada. I don’t understand. That’s Pepsi money. For a while, everything I saw that was really fancy, I was like, That’s Pepsi money. It was bizarre."
In keeping with its epic theme, the advert was launched at the National Gallery in London on January 26, 2004, with May, Taylor, Beyoncé, Britney and Pink all in attendance.
"Filming the ad was awesome!" Britney Spears said on the red carpet. "It made me feel empowered and I got to work with these two fantastic gladiator women."
The first comment beneath an upload of this advert on YouTube states, "this Super Bowl commercial spot holds the record for the most expensive commercial to ever air on TV."
But in fact, the advert never aired on American TV at all.
"Somehow this never played during the Super Bowl," confirmed Tarsem Singh. "Otherwise, it would have been one of those iconic ads in America that people would have remembered."
And yet, 20 years later, it's still an ad that gets people talking.
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