Next Up for Baron Cohen: Saddam Film

'The Dictator' based on book Hussein may have written
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Jan 21, 2011 9:26 AM CST
Next Up for Baron Cohen: Saddam Film
This is a Nov. 7, 2007 file photo of Sacha Baron Cohen aka Borat Sagdiyev as he attends a book signing at Borders Books in Westwood, Ca.   (AP Photo / Tammie Arroyo, File)

If you had any doubts about Sacha Baron Cohen's love of controversy, his next role should squash them: The Borat star will play a thinly veiled version of Saddam Hussein in a comedy called The Dictator. The film is loosely based on a book, Zabibah and The King, thought to have been written by Hussein, and the New York Observer notes that the book's king is basically a 12th-century stand-in for Hussein. The Huffington Post adds that the story, in which the king falls in love with a married girl whose husband rapes her, is an allegory: The king, while based on Saddam, represents Iraq and the rapist husband is the US. It will be released next May.
(More Sacha Baron Cohen stories.)

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