What to expect from Sacha Baron Cohen’s next movie, ‘Bruno’

What happened

Universal Pictures has announced that Bruno, Sacha Baron Cohen’s follow-up to Borat, will be released in the U.S. on May 15, 2009. In Bruno, as was the case with Borat, Cohen plays the title character, this time posing as a flamboyant fashion and celebrity journalist. (Variety)

What the commentators said

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Sacha Baron Cohen “offended Christians, Jews, women and the entire population of Kazakhstan with Borat," said Veronica Schmidt in the Times Online, and now he’s getting ready to “dish up another dose of his merciless humour.” Borat led to “a slew of lawsuits and a wave of outrage”; In Bruno, Cohen plays a “gay catwalk groupie” that “sucks in unsuspecting members of the fashion world”—we’ll see what happens this time around.

“Are people going to want to see another Sacha Baron Cohen movie?” said Ben Carrozza in the blog Dose.ca. “We think: ja!” We can’t wait to watch Bruno “skewer North American opinions on homosexuality, the fashion industry and celebrity culture. What could Cohen possibly find wrong about those viewpoints over here?”

Universal has kept pretty quiet about Bruno, said Peter Sciretta in the blog /film. But we do “know that Bruno has interviewed Arnold Scwarzenegger and Ben Affleck, and was caught stripping down to tight shorts in the lobby of Wichita Kansas Airport.” And Universal is releasing the movie on May 15, a date that “has become synonymous with the beginning of the summer movie season,” so they “must have a lot of faith” in it.

But Bruno will be going up against Angels and Demons, the sequel to The Da Vinci Code, said Brad Brevet in the blog Rope of Silicon. Borat made $26 million on its opening weekend, while The Da Vinci Code took in $77 million. This could be “a massive gamble for Universal.” Then again, Bruno will be rated R, so it will probably appeal “to a different audience.” And “the only comedy worth mentioning that comes out before it would be The Pink Panther 2.”