There is some hand-wringing going on about Borat, which opens in two weeks. Is it being overhyped? Will it crash and burn, having never crossed over from the “hipster”* audience to the general public? Whatever happens, Sacha Baron Cohen doesn’t seem to be too stressed about it; while he’s making the rounds like mad to promote the movie – always in character – he’s also begun taking other roles, like one in Tim Burton’s adaptation of Sweeney Todd. And he’s looking towards a sequel to Borat.
But how could he make a sequel, you wonder. The joke will have been done by then, and it’ll be so much harder to trick people with the same Kazakhstan act. So he’s dropping Borat and is right now secretly creating a new character. Next summer he’ll hit the road and do a similar reality-based schtick. The film will be co-written and co-produced with Jay Roach. I don’t imagine that we’ll know who this character is until after next summer, but if some film crew with a very strange reporter wants to ask you questions, be wary.
By the way, you can see the first four minutes of Borat on YouTube (click here). This sort of thing is part of the perceived overexposure of the character and film, but I think people are really underestimating the teen crowd for this one – the kids who will be texting their reviews to their friends immediately.
* This definition of hipster isn’t one I understand, by the way. To see what I understand to be hipsters, go to Williamsburg in Brooklyn or Silverlake in LA.