KEY POINTS:
Sacha Baron Cohen's latest film deal may be about to do for Austria what the comic actor has already achieved in Kazakhstan and Staines.
Riding in the back of his newly-released film starring Kazakh reporter Borat, another of his comic alter egos is about to graduate to the
big screen, it was reported yesterday.
According to the industry bible Hollywood Reporter, Universal Studios have agreed a deal worth £22 million ($62 million) for a film starring Bruno, Baron Cohen's gay Austrian fashion reporter.
In addition the film studio will foot the £13.1 million bill for production budget, according to the report.
The success of the Borat film, Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, appears to have increased its creator's bankability.
Universal is reported to have defeated competition for Baron Cohen's signature from rival studios Fox, DreamWorks and Sony.
Borat producer Jay Roach, who also worked on Meet the Parents, is thought to have agreed to work on the latest venture which is due to start filming next summer.
Universal made no comment on the deal yesterday but if it is confirmed it would complete a remarkable hat-trick of the British comedian, whose career took off after he appeared eight years ago on Channel 4's Eleven O'Clock Show.
Before the controversial feature film starring Borat, Baron Cohen made his cinema debut in 2002 with Ali G Indahouse starring the gang member of the "West Staines Massiv".
Bruno, a parody of a flamboyant fashion reporter, made his debut on Da Ali G Show where he earned his dubious reputation for duping guests into making fatuous remarks on anything from fashion, entertainment, celebrity and homosexuality.
Dressed in a camp style and frequently appearing in his trademark laced-up denim jerkin, Bruno is a reporter for a station bearing a close resemblance to Austrian national broadcaster ORF.
His section on Da Ali G Show is called Funkyzeit mit Bruno (Funkytime with Bruno) and he affects a high-pitched voice employing a mock Anglo-German hybrid language.
Among his numerous on-screen stings, he dupes a fashion designer into condemning the unfashionable to concentration camps and in the same episode leads a casting director into saying that Osama bin Laden is "cool" and "fashionable".
In a swipe at the frequent sham of celebrity reporting, he encourages his subjects to contradict themselves and once convinced a fashion boutique owner to wrongly claim Madonna as one of her clients after saying no-one could prove it either way.
A third film for Sacha Baron Cohen keeps the comic actor in the limelight.
Last week saw the premiere of the Borat film following long debate in Kazakhstan over Baron Cohen's depiction of Borat as a bigoted, anti-Semitic, sexist, homophobe.
Over the past year, Baron Cohen's act has offended Kazakh government ministers and apparently drawn criticism from the president.
Among Borat's favourite tricks is describing his homeland's "chain of importance" running down from "God, man, horse, dog, woman, then rat".
Among the traditional folk songs, he tells audiences, is a ditty entitled Throw the Jew Down the Well, which is best enjoyed after a few glasses of the local wine - made from horse urine.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Yerzhan Ashykbayev immediately hit back after the MTV appearance, describing Baron Cohen's act as "utterly unacceptable, being a concoction of bad taste and ill manners which is completely incompatible with the ethics and civilised behaviour of Kazakhstan's people".
The government hired two public relations firms to counter the bad publicity and ran a four-page advertisement in The New York Times.
After trying various methods of rebuttal including threatening legal action and banning his website, the country's deputy foreign minister has invited Cohen to see the country first hand.
Rakhat Aliyev, the powerful son-in-law of the oil-rich country's president, told the Kazakhstan news agency: "He can discover a lot of things. Women drive cars, wine is made of grapes, and Jews are free to go to synagogue."
Baron Cohen's publicist in Los Angeles was unavailable for comment yesterday.
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