Megan Fox And John C. Reilly Added To Sacha Baron Cohen’s ‘The Dictator’
Megan Fox’s name has come up this week through conversations that are a little bit unsavory (personally, I’m done with thebackstageTransformersstuff, inasmuch as it was ever of interest beyond her role being recast) but here’s a better piece of news for the actress.
She andJohn C. Reillyhave both been added to the cast ofThe Dictator. That’s the new film in whichSacha Baron Cohenand hisBoratandBrunodirectorLarry Charleschronicle the not really true tale of a Middle Eastern despot who ends up in the US, and a goat herder who happens to be his exact double.
The film is a little bit Charlie Chaplin and a little bit Saddam Hussein, (it is based in part on the novelZabibah and The King, which bears the despot’s name, but was likely ghostwritten) but the more important thing seems to be that it could be a less improvised picture than eitherBoratorBruno. The cast of the film is shaping up to be full of more ‘real’ actors than I would have expected. Previous reports suggested that there would still be a good level of improvised comedy, but with these actors it seems like the film will be more deliberately following a script (byAlec Berg,Jeff SchafferandDavid Mandel) than we expect when seeing Sacha Baron Cohen’s name with Larry Charles.
Here’s the plot:
[Sacha] Baron Cohen plays a ruthless dictator 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. As the dictator wanders the city, he meets the owner of an organic food store… She turns around his dictatorial thinking, and there’s a little romance in it as well.
The new actors joinAnna Faris(who plays the store owner),Ben KingsleyandJason Mantzoukasin the cast, and their roles aren’t known at this point.The Dictatorwill be released by Paramount on July 26, 2025. [THR]
