Ali G Returns: Sacha Baron Cohen Tries on the Tracksuit Again for 'Who Iz I?'
Amazon MGM Studios has unveiled the first trailer for Ali G: Who Iz I?, a new comedy that brings Sacha Baron Cohen back to the character that launched his career. The film is set to reach cinemas globally on 23 October 2026, according to Deadline.
The project is a milestone for Cohen beyond the return of his most famous alter ego. Who Iz I? is his feature directorial debut — he also wrote the screenplay and stars, Yahoo Entertainment and Deadline report. That triples his usual workload on a character comedy, where he has typically handed the writing and directing to collaborators while focusing on performance.
Ali G first appeared on Channel 4's The 11 O'Clock Show in 1998, a bumbling, tracksuited faux-interviewer from the London suburb of Staines who confused and cornered real public figures on camera. The character spun off into Da Ali G Show, which ran for one season on Channel 4 before moving to HBO for two further installments and reaching a global audience. A feature film, Ali G Indahouse, followed in 2002 — a Universal Pictures comedy co-written by and starring Cohen, though it leaned on scripted narrative rather than the ambush interviews that made the character a sensation.
News of the new film leaked roughly a month before the trailer dropped, around the time Cohen was spotted in character at Wimbledon, Deadline notes. The sighting now reads as the first public sign that Ali G was back in rotation.
Who Iz I? reunites Cohen with Amazon MGM, the label behind Borat Subsequent Moviefilm in 2020. That sequel earned two Oscar nominations and proved that Cohen's hidden-camera method could still find an audience two decades after the original Borat made him an international name. Whether the new film returns to that documentary-style ambush format or follows the scripted path of Indahouse remains unclear from the trailer — though the title's echo of Indahouse suggests Cohen knows exactly which lineage he is drawing from.
For audiences who discovered Ali G through grainy Channel 4 clips or late-night HBO replays, the appeal is straightforward: a comic actor who built a career on the gap between his characters and a straight-faced world, returning to the character where it all started, now with a director's chair as well. The 23 October date plants the film firmly in the autumn corridor, when studios slot adult-skewing comedies ahead of the holiday blockbuster season.
Domestic, the United States and Canada, gets the film on the same day as the rest of the world — a global day-and-date release that signals Amazon MGM's confidence in the character's reach beyond Britain. Cohen last wore the yellow sunglasses on screen more than two decades ago. The tracksuit, apparently, still fits.
