Baron Cohen to play Saddam in The Dictator

The outrageous star of Borat and Bruno plans to play former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein in a new film to be titled The Dictator.

British actor Sacha Baron Cohen has signed with Paramount Pictures for a film based on the book Zabibah and the King, which Saddam is believed to have written. The book, a bestseller in Iraq in 2000, six years before Saddam was executed, tells of a wise and good Iraqi leader who falls in love with a humble peasant girl.

Paramount Pictures said the film would tell "the heroic story of a dictator who risked his life to ensure that democracy would never come to the country he so lovingly oppressed."

Alec Berg, Jeff Schaffer and David Mandel, writers on Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm, have been recruited to pen the script. The Dictator will be directed by Borat and Bruno helmer Larry Charles.

The Dictator is set to be released worldwide on May 11, 2012.