Movie News

Sacha Baron Cohen to join the 'Chicago 7'?

Thu 03 Jan 9:30 AM

It would appear that things just keep getting better and better for "Borat" star Sacha Baron Cohen. Soon to be seen opposite Johnny Depp in "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street", Cohen, at least according to reports in The Sunday Times, will follow up with the plum role of Abbie Hoffman in the Steven Spielberg's "The Trial of the Chicago 7".

Spielberg's latest venture (after that small 'indie' film about an archeologist and his trusty whip) will chart the real-life events of 1968 when anti-Vietnam War protestors took to the streets of Chicago forcing the abandonment of the Democrat Party Convention. The protests soon turned nasty and the streets were turned into a new kind of war zone.

After the clashes had settled, eight police officers and eight protesters including Abbie Hoffman were brought before a jury. The policemen were acquitted with one member of the remaining 8 jailed for contempt - hence the "Chicago 7" who were left to fight the charges.

Hoffman was a veritable prankster and 1960s counterculture phenom who used a series of high-profile stunts to campaign against the Vietnam War such as disrupting the New York Stock Exchange with showers of fake money.