Although he hasn’t confirmed what his plans for his next movie will be, The Sun is reporting that Sacha Baron Cohen’s next character will be a wannabe pop star who’s desperate to win the Eurovision Song Contest.
Once he’s released a major movie featuring one of his characters, it becomes virtually impossible to dupe the public with them again, and so we’re unlikely to see anything more from Bruno or Borat. According to The Sun, a source told them Cohen and writing partner Dan Mazer, “thought it better for Sacha to dream up another character – and the scope for an oddball creation is huge.”
The tabloid’s story also says that initial plans had been for Bruno to try and make it to Eurovision as part of his quest to become famous, but the makers decided to go in a different direction.
While this could just The Sun making things up (whenever you see the words ‘a source told us’ in the newspaper, you have to be suspicious), it is feasible. Although it would probably involve less satire than Bruno or Borat, there’s plenty of scope for skewering the world’s obsession with reality TV singing contests and the idea you can only count yourself a success in life if Simon Cowell likes you. However, how they’ll deal with trying to get Cohen into the actual Eurovision contest is another matter.