Robbie Williams | Waldbühne Berlin

In the organizer's words:

For the next two hours your ass is mine!" There aren't many pop stars who can afford to start their concerts with this announcement. Perhaps only one: Robbie Williams. Once the rebel, then the Take That dropout, at least his bandmates wouldn't have bet that Robbie Williams' career would far outshine theirs. But that's how it turned out: Williams, often with songwriter and producer Guy Chambers behind him, gave the world anthems like "Angels" (which even Taylor Swift covered at a UK show with Robbie as the star guest), upbeat pop songs like "Feel", freaky songs like "Rock DJ", his Britpop-inspired, sung work assignment "Let Me Entertain You" or stylish swing cover duets like "Something Stupid" alongside Nicole Kidman.

But it wasn't just the songs that made him one of the biggest European pop stars of the last twenty years. Robbie Williams is a born entertainer who can make tens of thousands go wild. His record is still impressive today: over 85 million albums sold worldwide, 14 UK number 1 albums (the most for a solo artist): 7 number 1 singles, the most concert tickets sold in one day (1. 6 million on November 19, 2005), three record-breaking evenings at Knebworth in front of 375,000 people in 2003 and the parallel great successes of his swing albums. When he decided to take Take That for another spin in 2010, the comeback album Progress became the fastest-selling album of the 21st century and the subsequent tour was the biggest-selling British tour of all time.

The Robbie Williams festivities have never really stopped, but they are about to enter a new round. Following the four-part Netflix documentary "Robbie Williams" by Joe Pearlman in November last year, an extraordinary biopic will be released in cinemas at the beginning of January: Director Michael Gracy, who filmed "The Greatest Showman" in 2017, stages the wild life of Robbie Williams in a way that has never been seen before. Williams' is not replaced by a 'normal' actor - who could be? - but by a motion-capture animated chimpanzee. The explanation for this step is explained by Williams' voice in the first trailer: "I know, I know: what's the deal with the chimpanzee? Well, I just always thought I was a bit more ... primitive than others."