It was only two days when we brought you the first look, a set image, of Sacha Baron Cohen in his next comedy The Dictator, directed by Borat and Bruno helmer Larry Charles. Today, Huffington Post has premiered the first official image, as well as a few new details on the project. Currently under production in NYC, Cohen stars along Ben Kingsley, Jason Mantzoukas, and Anna Faris in the “heroic story of a dictator who risked his life to ensure that democracy would never come to the country he so lovingly oppressed.”
Written by Alec Berg, Jeff Schaffer and David Mandel, the film is loosely based off Saddam Hussein‘s novel, Zabibah and the King. Faris plays an organic food store owner, who changes Cohen’s dictatorial line of thinking, with some romance thrown in. Mantzoukas and Kingsley play two Middle Eastern characters. HuffPo shares that Cohen plays “a Hussein-like dictator who gets secretly replaced by a lookalike goat herder and now must find new meaning in a life in New York City,” but you can see there synopsis of the original book below, followed by the image.
The book itself is about a benevolent, beloved king who falls in love with a beautiful, victimized girl who was raped by her cruel husband. Believe it or not, it’s a subtle allegory for Iraq and the United States — the king (based, obviously, on Saddam) is the peaceful Iraq, while the cruel, rapist husband is the Gulf War-waging United States.
The Dictator hits theaters May 11th, 2012.
What do you think about the first official image and synopsis?