It’s been a few months since we heard about the next film by Borat and Bruno team Sacha Baron Cohen and director Larry Charles, the Saddam Hussein influenced The Dictator, so it’s worth mentioning that Variety reports that Ben Kingsley (Shutter Island) has been cast in the film in an unspecified “Middle Eastern character” role. This will make it his second collaboration with Cohen (the two are both in Martin Scorsese‘s upcoming Hugo Cabret).
The Variety article also mentions that Jason Mantzoukas (Baby Mama) is “in negotiations” to join the cast as well, and comedians Anna Faris, Kristen Wiig, and Gillian Jacobs are all in the running to play the female lead.
Cohen will play dual roles in the film as the titular dictator and a goat herder. The Dictator is an adaptation of the novel Zabibah and The King, which was anonymously published in Iraq but is widely believed to actually have been written by Saddam Hussein or, at the very least, written under his guidelines by ghostwriters. Though the novel is set in the 8th century, the novel itself is a thinly veiled allegory about a heroic dictator taking on the evil United States. Oh that wacky Saddam! Paramount’s press release says “The film tells the heroic story of a dictator who risked his life to ensure that democracy would never come to the country he so lovingly oppressed,” which sure sounds like it will be a great farce.
The Dictator is set for a May 11, 2012 release. The script is co-written by Cohen along with Alec Berg, Jeff Schaffer and David Mandel, who were all co-writers on Seinfeld and the film EuroTrip, although it’s clear that the film will likely require extensive improvisation.
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