Ali G Returns: Sacha Baron Cohen Revives the Rudeboy in New Trailer for 'Who Iz I?'
The first full trailer for Ali G: Who Iz I? arrived online on 25 August 2026, bringing Sacha Baron Cohen's academically challenged west Staines rudeboy back to the screen for the first time in more than two decades. The film is set for a theatrical release on 23 October 2026, distributed by Amazon MGM Studios (Fandango, 24 Aug 2026).
The trailer shows Ali G — the tracksuited, slang-slurring alter ego created and played by Baron Cohen — running pranks on unsuspecting public figures, including retired US Army general Stewart Rodeheaver. It also appears to show a prank on Canadian DJ and producer Deadmau5 at a music festival (The Guardian, 25 Aug 2026). A poster for the film had been released the day before the trailer dropped (Yahoo Entertainment, 24 Aug 2026).
Ali G: Who Iz I? is the second feature-length comedy built around the character, following 2002's Ali G Indahouse, which earned more than £17 million at the UK box office. It is also the fifth film to feature characters originating from Da Ali G Show, the Channel 4 and HBO series that ran for three series in the early 2000s (The Guardian, 25 Aug 2026).
Ali G first surfaced on the UK comedy programme The 11 O'Clock Show in 1998, where Baron Cohen's tactic of interviewing real public figures in character quickly became a signature. During Da Ali G Show, he asked Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin whether man would ever walk on the sun and pitched a business idea for "ice-cream gloves" to Donald Trump. That same series also introduced Baron Cohen's characters Borat Sagdiyev and Brüno, both of whom went on to headline their own films (The Guardian, 25 Aug 2026).
The first Borat film, released in 2006, grossed more than $260 million globally. A sequel, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, followed in 2020 and featured an interview with Rudy Giuliani. Baron Cohen claimed to have retired both Ali G and Borat in 2007, citing the characters' growing fame and the resulting difficulty of finding people who would not recognise them (The Guardian, 25 Aug 2026).
Nearly twenty years on from that retirement, the return poses a practical question Baron Cohen himself once flagged: how do you fool people who have already seen the act? The trailer suggests at least part of the answer lies in targeting figures outside the comedy's original UK and US television orbit. Whether the formula still lands with cinema audiences will be tested on 23 October, when Amazon MGM Studios puts the film into theatres.
