Sacha Baron Cohen has three months on a London stage to decide Quentin Tarantino's last film
He plays a man billed as the greatest actor in the world who goes to Paris and insults the French, so Borat fans know the drill. What a flop would mean for the film, Tarantino has already spelled out.
Sacha Baron Cohen will play the title role in The Popinjay Cavalier, Quentin Tarantino's first stage play, at the Phoenix Theatre on Charing Cross Road. Tarantino wrote it and directs it himself. Previews start on 23 February 2027, opening night is 18 March, and the run closes on 13 June. Tickets went on sale on 12 October, the day after Baron Cohen led roughly 300 Ali G lookalikes around London.
The timing is less coincidence than a man with two things to sell. Ali G: Who Iz I?, his directing debut, reaches cinemas on 23 October for one week only, courtesy of Amazon MGM. Sunday's procession took in a Thames boat party, Big Ben and Marble Arch, and finished with a lookalike competition at Cineworld Leicester Square. Ali G, in character, promised to make it "an annual event every five years". Fair enough.
Nine films down, one play to go
Tarantino has said for the best part of a decade that he will stop at ten films. He has made nine, counting both volumes of Kill Bill as one, and the ninth, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, came out in 2019. His planned tenth, The Movie Critic, was dropped in 2024. Then, at Sundance in January 2025, he explained to Elvis Mitchell what he was writing instead:
"If it's a fiasco I probably won't turn it into a movie. But if it's a smash hit? It might be my last movie."
— Quentin Tarantino, at Sundance in January 2025
So the final entry in one of the most carefully guarded filmographies in Hollywood now has a trial run. Not test screenings in Burbank, not a studio committee: three months of West End audiences and London theatre critics, who are not famous for going easy on film people.
The play is a comedy of deception and disguise set in 1830s Europe, inspired by the swashbuckling epics of stage and screen. Baron Cohen plays an actor billed as the greatest in the world, who travels to Paris for a part and lands in trouble by insulting the French. Sonia Friedman Productions and Sony Pictures Entertainment produce. Sony also released Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, so the film rights would not have far to travel.
Tarantino's last film will be decided by people queuing for seats on Charing Cross Road.
A Borat in a frock coat
Offending an entire nation for laughs is home turf for the casting. Borat did it to Kazakhstan in 2006, the government there was not amused, and by the 2020 sequel the country's tourism board had adopted "Very nice!" as a slogan. Swapping Kazakhstan for France and a suit for a frock coat is hardly a stretch.
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It is a debut on both sides. Neither man has worked in the West End before, and Baron Cohen's statement leaned into it: he said he was "beyond delighted" to be losing his "West End virginity" with Tarantino, and that he had made the director promise "not to be gentle". Tarantino, by comparison, kept it short and said he was keen to give London a great night out.
What happens after June
Even a hit does not mean a film any time soon. Tarantino has estimated the play could take up a year and a half to two years of his life if it runs and tours, and he has also said he is in no hurry to direct his final feature. A sell-out spring buys the option, not the shoot.
A flop is simpler. By his own rule, The Popinjay Cavalier stays a play, and the hunt for film number ten starts again from scratch, five years after the last one was abandoned. No pressure, Sacha.
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