Last week, Paramount was looking at three actresses (Kristen Wiig, Anna Faris, and Community‘s Gillian Jacobs) to play lead opposite Sacha Baron Cohen in the new comedy release The Dictator. It now appears that of those three, the studio is going with Faris, as she’s been offered the role and has entered negotiations.
The Paramount Pictures comedy will have Sacha Baron Cohen playing double duty, as both a dictator and a sheepherder lookalike imposter. To be directed by Larry Charles, who previously directed Baron Cohen in both Borat and Bruno, the comedy is slated to arrive in theaters worldwide on May 11, 2012.
Scripted by a trio of former Seinfeld scribes (Alec Berg, Jeff Schaffer, and David Mandel), the comedy will revolve around a ruthless dictator (Baron Cohen) 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. Wandering New York he encounters the owner of an organic food store (Faris) who changes his dictatorial thinking.
Recently, Faris finished the High Fidelity-esque comedy What’s Your Number, which also stars Captain America Chris Evans.
The Dictator at one time stirred up quite the bidding war before Paramount Pictures came out ahead due to the studio sending Baron Cohen and his WME reps two goats with Paramount logo T-shirts.
The studio recently released the official logline for the comedy: “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. It is inspired by the best selling novel, Zabibah and The King, by Saddam Hussein.”
