We’ve known for a while that Sacha Baron Cohen has been up to something, with the prevailing theory being a secret new season of his Showtime series Who Is America?, but Collider says he’s actually been working on a different (or even additional) secret new thing: A sequel to his breakout hit movie Borat: Cultural Learnings Of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation Of Kazakhstan. Apparently, Baron Cohen secretly filmed Borat 2 at some point and has now been screening it for “a select few industry types”—possibly while searching for some kind of studio backing. Collider says it’s unclear who would’ve paid for a Borat 2, since Fox put out the last one but Disney might not be excited about a hard-R comedy in 2020 now that it owns the Fox stuff, but the story theorizes that Baron Cohen might just own the Borat character outright at this point.
Either way, one of Collider’s sources said that the movie goes in a meta direction to address the fact that Baron Cohen can’t exactly dress up like Borat and interview unsuspecting people, claiming that it’s like “Cohen playing Borat playing Cohen” (whatever that means). Another source, though, says that Borat 2 does exist but that meta reading of it isn’t quite right. Collider also points out that nobody knows if original Borat director Larry Charles or producer Jay Roach are involved, since the only thing we seem to know for sure is that Baron Cohen was spotted earlier this summer in Los Angeles while wearing his Borat costume, but the rumors about Baron Cohen showing this thing to Hollywood people is apparently enough for its existence to be confirmed.
It’s also worth considering the fact that Baron Cohen is noted prankster, obviously, and his pranks have extended in a weird meta direction in the past (like when Sarah Palin complained about being interviewed for his then-unannounced Showtime series and then her interview never even aired). This Borat thing could be part of a larger trick or a more complicated project that isn’t necessarily Borat 2. We don’t know, and we won’t know until Baron Cohen says one way or another.