Sacha Baron Cohen’s next film, The Dictator, now has a May 11, 2012 release date according to Paramount, which (as reported earlier) outbid all other studios for the project with a tasty $20 million bonus paid directly to Cohen and also by sending goats to his office. Those goats weren’t there for nothing: They were living, odorous nods to the fact that Cohen will play both a ruler and a common goat herder in the film, which is described as “the heroic story of a dictator who risked his life to ensure that democracy would never come to the country he so lovingly oppressed.” The Dictator reunites Cohen with his Borat and Bruno director Larry Charles, and perhaps even more enticingly, it’s said to be "inspired by Zabibah And The King"—a romance novel long purported to have been written by Saddam Hussein, or at least by an army of ghostwriters under Hussein’s influence. Obviously it's going to be satirical, but man, if openly baiting rodeo rednecks and inciting gay panic at gun shows all across the land hasn’t already endeared Cohen to middle America, hearing that he's adapting a Saddam Hussein novel should definitely do it.
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