Sacha Baron Cohen is in final negotiations to take a small but pivotal role in Quentin Tarantino's next film, Django Unchained, reports Variety. He looks set to play a gambler who buys Django's enslaved wife, Broomhilda.
Tarantino's film stars Jamie Foxx in the title role of an escaped slave who becomes a bounty hunter and returns to the plantation where he once lived in order to free his wife. The movie is a paean to spaghetti westerns, though set in the deep south rather than the old west, with the title referencing the 1966 Sergio Corbucci film Django.
Variety suggests the role of the gambler, Scotty, is an important one and Tarantino has spent some time and effort to secure the right actor. If he signs on the dotted line, Baron Cohen will be one of the final cast members to do so. Django Unchained also features Leonardo DiCaprio as the villain of the piece, plantation owner Calvin Candie, who runs a sadistic brothel named Candyland where slaves are forced into sex work. Christoph Waltz stars as an Austrian bounty hunter who teaches Django his trade and Samuel L Jackson is a wise, proud house slave named Stephen; while Kerry Washington (Broomhilda), Kurt Russell and Dennis Christopher are also on board.
Django Unchained will shoot early next year for a December 2012 release date. It follows Tarantino's most successful film so far at the global box office, Inglourious Basterds, which pulled in $321m (£196m).
