Sacha Baron Cohen's next character muse is Austrian

By Stone Martindale Oct 31, 2006, 19:22 GMT

10/25/2006 - Sacha Baron Cohen - Borat Movie Premiere in London - Arrivals - Odeon Leicester Square - London, England © Photorazzi

British satirist Sacha Baron Cohen has reportedly signed a $42.5 million deal for his next film about a gay Austrian fashion reporter, Bruno. 

Bruno is yet another of Cohen's alter egos, a gay fashionista from Austria, who claims to be "the voice of Austrian youth TV" and was a character in Cohen's cable TV series, Da Ali G Show.

Cohen's fictional Kazakh TV reporter in the movie, Borat, made the officials of Kazakhstan a bit angry by portraying the Central Asian country as a nation of horse urine drinking misogynists, racists and anti-Semites who sing songs like "throw the Jew down the well."

Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan opens in the US on this Friday.

According to entertainment trade paper the Hollywood Reporter, Universal Pictures won an intense bidding war against other studios to acquire worldwide rights to Bruno, which will be shot next summer.

Austrians may have to catch up to speed on Sacha's character developments.  "Bruno who?," said an Austrian foreign ministry official when asked for a comment on Cohen's planned move into Austria.

Bruno conducts his interviews clutching a microphone stamped with his fictional station's logo, OJRF.

The price that Universal allegedly paid for feature rights to Bruno has people talking in light of the fact that Cohen's first movie, Borat, has yet to prove it has legs and stamina in the worldwide box office.