Creator Sacha Baron Cohen recently discussed why he created a sequel to 2006's Borat. While the film's message and delivery were initially intended to be a cautionary tale for the 2020 U.S. Presidential election, it ended up also being a realistic portrayal of a global pandemic.

"I felt democracy was in peril," Baron Cohen said in an interview with Variety. "I felt people's lives were in peril and I felt compelled to finish the movie." However, Baron Cohen didn't anticipate how COVID-19 would alter production schedules and a film's release.

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COVID-19 changed Universal's release plans as it originally opted to have the film's release in theaters. Baron Cohen, on the other hand, foresaw that many theatres would be closed by October 2020 and opted instead to sell the film's distribution rights to Amazon Prime's streaming service so that as many people as possible could view the film prior to Nov. 3, 2020. His main goal, if possible, was to have the film's release be before the 2020 Presidential Election. He succeeded in this aim as the film debuted on Amazon Prime on Oct. 23.

Baron Cohen's sequel, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, debuted to "tens of millions" of viewers within October alone.

"The movie was originally about the danger of Trump and Trumpism," Baron Cohen said. "What coronavirus demonstrated was that there’s a lethal effect on his spreading of lies and conspiracy theories. Rather than run away from how the world was dealing with coronavirus, I felt we should lean into it," he said. "Borat is a fake character, played by me, in the real world… If we got people to take their masks off, it would be a fake character in a fake world, in a manipulated world, so the basis of the comedy wouldn’t work."

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"I don’t want to egotistically imply that people would watch 'Borat' and not vote for Trump, but that was the aim," said Baron Cohen.

Baron Cohen also confirmed within his recent Variety interview that he's not planning on bringing out Borat again. "I brought Borat out because of Trump," he said. "There was a purpose to this movie, and I don’t really see the purpose of doing it again."

Directed by Jason Woliner, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bride to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan is written by Sacha Baron Cohen, Anthony Hines, Dan Swimer, Peter Baynham, Erica Rivinoja, Dan Mazer, Jena Friedman and Lee Kern, with a story by Cohen, Hines, Swimer and Nina Pedrad. The film is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video.

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Source: Variety