Paramount Gets Sacha Baron Cohen Film

Paramount Gets Sacha Baron Cohen Film (After He & WME Get Paramount's Goats)


The deal is headed to Paramount after a lot of studios were hot for the comedy, and ultimately Sony and Paramount were the final two left standing in the bidding war. So the goat gambit worked. (Actually, there were two goats sent by the studio: one to WME headquarters, and the other to its client Sacha, both wearing Paramount T-shirts and trailing animal handlers. That's how badly Paramount topper Brad Grey, who was leading his team's negotiations, wanted this comedy project). This followed Sacha Baron Cohen and writers Alec Berg, Jeff Schaffer, and David Mandel pitching the laugher to a total of six studio presidents over 2 days. Berg, Schaffer, and Mandel were the Seinfeld writer/producers who are now the executive producers of Curb Your Enthusiasm and get a ton of money for movie jobs. So this will be a whopping deal.

As we reported yesterday, visitors to WME were greeted by a goat wandering across the 3rd floor atrium -- that is, until Ari Emanuel had the goat removed after it took a dump in the hallway -- because there's a character in the movie that tends goats and the Paramount guys wanted to show WME, which was selling the project, they have a sense of humor, too. "This is the reason why people are paying so much attention to this pitch. It's a big straight ahead comedy and Sacha is starring in a really funny role," a studio source told me.

This big deal comes at a time when Hollywood studios seem to hate spending money on development lately. But they couldn't resist Sacha or the writers' bonafides. Schaffer was one of the writers on Bruno. Mandel's script work on the wife-swapping baseball film The Trade has Warner Bros hoping to make the film with Ben Affleck. The trio's last credited movie collaboration was EuroTrip and The Cat in the Hat.