Bruno to follow Borat to big screen

The Borat movie is as yet untried at the box office, but Universal Pictures is reported to have offered $42.5 million US for the nextfilm by Sacha Baron Cohen.

The controversial comedian's nextcharacter to come to the screen will beBruno, the camp Austrian fashionista Baron Cohen created for Da Ali G Show.

Universal has won a bidding war with Dreamworks, Sony Pictures, 20th Century Fox and Warner Bros for rights tothe Bruno movie, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, which debuted in Canada at the Toronto International Film Festival, does not go into commercial release until Nov. 3.

Borat, a boorish, anti-Semitic Kazakh journalist created by Baron Cohen forhis subversive comedy program Da Ali G Show, has raised objections from the country of Kazakhstan and from Jewish viewers.

In the movie, Borat visits America and becomes obsessed with meeting and marrying Pamela Anderson.

Fox has scaled back the opening of Borat to about 800 cinemas from 1,200 because the U.S. distributor is concerned that viewers aren't aware of the movie.

Da Ali G Show was a cult hit in the U.S. for the British comedian.

Jay Roach would produce the Bruno movie, to be shot next summer,with Baron Cohen.

Bruno, a gay Austrian fashion-show presenter, comments on the catwalks of the U.S. and Europe and fools his interviewees into making idiotic statements with his often unsteady grasp of English.

Baron Cohen also will appear in the comedy Curly Oxide and Vic Thrill —about a young Hasidic Jew and an aging rocker who meet and form a band —and Dinner for Schmucks, about a man who disrupts the lives of everyone around him.