Sacha Baron Cohen to play Saddam Hussein

Sacha Baron Cohen is set to play Saddam Hussein in a new movie.

The Bruno and Ali G comic will star in and co-write The Dictator, inspired by a book the former Iraqi leader wrote called Zabibah And The King.

The movie, due for released in May 2012, will be directed by Larry Charles who worked with Sacha on films Bruno and Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.

Paramount Pictures, the film company making the film, said: "The film tells the heroic story of a dictator who risked his life to ensure that democracy would never come to the country he so lovingly oppressed."

Zabibah and the King was written under the pseudonym 'The Author', but it is believed it was written by ghost-writers carefully supervised by Hussein.