Paramount has snagged the rights to Sacha Baron Cohen’s next comedy film. As we previously reported, Cohen along with former “Seinfeld” writers/producers and current “Curb Your Enthusiasm” executive producers Alec Berg, Jeff Schaffer and David Mandel were shopping the project to all the major studios around town. Paramount won the bid when, in something that seems like it was ripped right out of an episode of “Entourage,” they sent live goats wearing studio t-shirts to Cohen and his the agency offices of WME (his reps).
Why goats? Apparently, in the untitled film, Cohen “plays dual roles: both a goat herder and a deposed foreign dictator who gets lost in the United States.” While other plot details are being kept under wraps, word is that it will be like a cross between “Trading Places” and “Coming To America.” These will be brand new characters for Cohen and will be his next film after Martin Scorsese’s “Hugo Cabret.”
The film is budgeted at $65 million, but Paramount feels confident the film will be a hit and they better hope it is. Cohen is earning a staggering $20 million for the film against 20% first-dollar gross. Not chump change in the least.
All that said, Paramount is on board and the only way the film is not getting made is if Cohen doesn’t approve the script. But considering he went to the writers themselves for every pitch, fleshing out the characters and story personally in each meeting, its unlikely he’ll walk now. The project fits right the wheelhouse of his fish-out-water films and characters of “Borat” and “Bruno” and it will be interesting to see how that concept will be adapted to a purely scripted film.