Sacha Baron Cohen Will Be Saddam Hussein?!?

It’s been a busy week here at MovieBuzzers HQ as we’ve kept up with all the news from a VERY busy film news week. While nobody else was looking I nabbed this story, simply because it happens to be the oddest news story that I ever had a chance to write here. Believe it or not, the much-loved Sacha Baron Cohen of Borat and Bruno fame will star as Saddam Hussein in The Dictator. And if you think that’s the weird part, hit “more” to check out the really goofy details!

When it was initially reported that Cohen would be making a comedy about a dictator, the original reports made it sound like the film would essentially be a remake of Charlie Chaplin‘s wonderful The Great Dictator, in which fellow Brit Chaplin used the fact that he and Adolf Hitler had the same moustache to send up the genocidal maniac. This assumption was based on the idea that it was reported that Cohen will play both a commoner (in this case, a goat herder) and a dictator, like Chaplin did in his film. I didn’t know why a unique comedian like Cohen would choose to remake that film, so I am glad that those initial reports were misleading. Cohen will indeed play the dual roles in the film, but The Dictator will adapt 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 8^th 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.

This will not be the first adaptation of Zabibah and the King: reportedly there is not only a twenty-part (!) mini-series that aired on Iraqi television, but there is also a musical based on the novel!

The Dictator is set for a May 2012 release, and will be directed by Seinfeld alum Larry Charles (who directed both Borat and Bruno). 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. The trio also wrote The Cat In The Hat, but let’s just forget about that one.

Any interest in Cohen as Saddam Hussein? Tell us what’s on your mind below?