Sacha Baron Cohen is set to portray a singer who enters the Eurovision Song Contest – an annual singing competition previously won by ABBA.

Cohen originally planned to resurrect the character from his current hit film ‘Bruno’ – in which he plays a gay Austrian fashion of the same name – but he and his writing partner Dan Mazer decided against it.

A source said: “He and Dan thought it would be better if Sacha dreamed up another character, and the scope for another oddball creation is huge.”

The movie is expected to be another fake documentary in the style of ‘Bruno’ and ‘Borat…’ – in which Cohen played a Kazakhstani TV reporter traveling across America.

The script is ready and the as-yet untitled film is expected to be released in 2011. Meanwhile, Cohen has agreed to play Spanish twins in new movie ‘Downsizing’.

The 37-year-old actor will portray two brothers who are identical apart from their height in the film, which also stars Reese Witherspoon and Meryl Streep.

According to reports, Cohen – who is engaged to Australian actress Isla Fisher, with whom he has a 22-month-old daughter Olive – is being paid around $7 million for the movie.

The movie, Bruno, a mock documentary about a gay Austrian guy starring Sacha Baron Cohen, has pulled in $30.4 million on it’s opening weekend – $14.4M on Friday, $8.8 million Saturday and an estimated $7.2 million Sunday.

While no slouch financially, the movie has some strange numbers attached to it. It’s unusual for a movie to take such a plunge in earnings from one day to the next on opening weekend and experts are worring that Bruno is already losing it’s crowd appeal.

Paul Dergarabedian, box-office analyst for Hollywood.com says:

“It is unusual for a film to drop on Saturday. Normally, you expect the film at least to be even on Saturday or above compared to Friday, because Saturday is the biggest moviegoing day of the weekend. It’s going to be interesting to see how it does over the long run.”

Sacha Baron Cohen as Bruno

Bruno read out a hilarious top 10 list on Letterman Thursday night. It was the second time he’s been on the show in a week.

Sacha Baron Cohen, who was on Letterman on Tuesday as himself to promote the new Bruno movie, showed up in character as Bruno on Thursday night’s episode. Bruno read out the top 10 list while wearing a gold colored jumpsuit and hat.

The top ten reasons to see ‘Bruno was the theme of the list and Cohen included things like “”Features lots of suggestive worlds like ‘Bratwurst’ and ‘Schnitzel’” and “It’s like ‘Transformers’ but not as gay.”

Bruno does Top 10 List on Letterman (VIDEO)

Sacha Baron Cohen (Bruno) is being sued by bingo hall worker Richelle Olson after a 2007 charity bingo incident where, while in character as Bruno, he assaulted her, resulting in injuries that left her confined to a wheelchair.

The suit claims Sacha Baron Cohen used “vulgar and offensive language” while he was calling the numbers at the charity bingo event, prompting Olson to try and take the microphone from him. That’s when a “physical struggle ensued” where she was “offensively touched, pushed and battered” causing her to fall to the ground.

Three camera men then rushed the stage … “where defendants attacked [her] for a period of one to five minutes to intentionally create a dramatic emotional response … while [they] recorded her humiliation and embarrassment,” the suit claims.

Olson says she retreated to a back room where she became so emotionally distraught that she fell and hit her head on the concrete floor, resulting in minor brain damage that has caused her to require the use of a wheelchair or cane to get around.

Beating up an old lady at a charity bingo would have made for some good comedy, but was it all staged? Sounds too bizarre not to have been. And why didn’t this lady come forward 2 years ago immediately after the incident?

[Source: TMZ]

Finally released: the Bruno Red Band Trailer. Sacha Baron Cohen is back with a followup to his hit 2006 film Borat.

The mockumentary is based around the interactions of the fictional “Bruno,” a character originally introduced in the Ali G series. Bruno tours mostly America filming a documentary, and like Borat before it sucks people in.

Bruno is in a spot of strife though: on its first submission it was given an NC17 rating (similar to an X rating elsewhere.) An NC17 rating is considered a kiss of death, and will limit the potential audience.

Here’s the Bruno Red Band Trailer: