Updated: I was enjoying the bank holiday sun so much that I forgot to add to this story with the news that the great
Sir. Ben Kingsley, a co-star of
Sacha Baron Cohen's on the forthcoming Martin Scorsese movie Hugo Cabret, has joined the Brit comedian's next improv based outrageous character comedy
The Dictator. The Oscar winning Gandhi actor will play one of two Middle Eastern characters who factor into the plot, which
Deadline have now updated in more clarity;
Baron Cohen plays a ruthless dictator who heads to the U.S. for a meeting at the United Nations and finds that his number two has replaced him with an unsuspecting sheepherder lookalike. As the dictator wanders the city, he meets the owner of an organic food store She turns around his dictatorial thinking, and theres a little romance in it as well.
Since the original article below it seems
Anna Faris has beaten Kristen Wiig and Gillian Jacobs for the role of the organic food store. All sounds cool, let's hope The Dictator can return Cohen back to form and recapture the magic of Borat after the disappointing Bruno. Original Article Follows... Two of Hollywood's female comedienne success stories,
Kristen Wiig and
Anna Faris are battling it out for the female role in
The Dictator, the new outrageous
Sacha Baron Cohen character comedy where the British funnyman plays a outlawed foreign dictactor who finds himself lost in America. It's the third movie in the improvisational comedy canon of Cohen after Bruno and Borat, and it will re-team him with director
Larry Charles. I shit you not but the Paramount film is based on a best-selling book by
Saddam Hussein titled
Zabibah and The King and has been described as "the heroic story of a dictator who risked his life to ensure that democracy would never come to the country he so lovingly oppressed." Cohen plays the duel roles of a goat herder and also the titular Dictator. Wiig & Faris along with Community's
Gillian Jacobs are all circling but as Cohen will need someone who is used to ad-libbing, thinking quickly off her feet and can be funny script-less, I'm guessing Wiig will be favourite given her time on Judd Apatow's filmography.
The Hollywood Reporter break the news and also reveal The League actor and recent Parks & Recreation guestee
Jason Mantzoukas is in talks to play a sidekick to Cohen's dictator. He definitely has the look for it; Filming begins in New York and Morocco next month with a May 11th, 2012 date attached. All eyes will be on Cohen, a global icon now, and whether he can still fool the general public with a new act.