Sacha Baron Cohen Has Signed on to Play a Really Obscure Superhero

Mandrake the Magician isn't quite Batman.

Image via 20th Century Fox

At his best, Sacha Baron Cohen can be one of the funniest people on the planet. But his recent track record hasn’t exactly been pure fire. His last starring role Grimsby bombed spectacularly and was savaged by critics, and the one before that, The Dictator, didn’t do that much better either (even though it’s actually ok).

So what’s he going to do to get his mojo back? What everyone else is doing in Hollywood — play a superhero. Cohen won’t be joining the Marvel or DC universes, or anything like that. Instead, he’s going be playing ‘Mandrake The Magician’. Who? Ok, so Mandrake is a character who predates even Batman and Superman, first appearing in a newspaper strip all the way back in 1934. He’s basically just your standard hero, but his gimmick is that he’s an old-timey magician with a top hat and tux. His most notable pop culture appearance was in the 80s cartoon Defenders Of The Earth, which co-starred fellow 30s newspaper heroes Flash Gordon and The Phantom. It seems like studios are trying to grab any superhero-like property they can lay their hands on — also seen with The Rock recently signing up to play pulp star Doc Savage.

It’s easy to think that this has ‘flop’ written all over it — non-Marvel or DC heroes don’t have a track record of being hits, and Baron Cohen is in a downward spiral rn. But if he can recapture the genius of Ali G and Borat in a superhero setting, we’d definitely be down for that.

[via AV Club]

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