As warring Take That pop stars, Gary Barlow  and Robbie Williams have had one of the rockiest relationships in music history.

Now Robbie has reignited the long-running feud with the release of a new biopic that originally painted his old bandmate Gary in a less-than-flattering light.

In fact, Gary, 53, was so disgruntled when he saw an early copy of the script for the Better Man biopic that he called up Robbie to complain that it made him look like Hollywood’s ultimate supervillain.

The unconventional biopic, which will be released on December 26, tells the rise of Williams’ pop career and struggles with addiction with the singer portrayed as a CGI monkey.

Robbie, 50, said: ‘We had a fractious relationship. And in the script, I speak how I spoke and I think how I thought back then, which wasn’t complimentary to Gaz, and we sent him the script.’

‘And he rang me and he’s a grown-up and there was no effing or pointing fingers, and he’s like, “Rob, I come off worse than Darth Vader in the first half.”’

The phone call, which referenced the villain at the centre of the Star Wars franchise, forced the hitmaker to mellow the portrayal.

Speaking at a Deadline preview press screening for the movie in Los Angeles, the Angels singer did defend himself, insisting director Michael Gracey wrote and directed the film.

Robbie also said that he was the main bad guy of the movie and not Gary.

The Let Me Entertain You musician said: ‘I’m quite happy to be the main villain in this movie. There were many villains in this movie until we legally couldn’t have many villains in this movie. And now the only villain in this movie is me.’

The singer lamented that his first manager got off easy, and said early drafts of the script took Robbie’s side in his feud with Gary.

Gary and Robbie’s factious relationship dates back to the 1990s, when Robbie branded his bandmate a ‘clueless w****r’ and quit Take That in 1995.