Sacha Baron Cohen is in talks to play Abbie Hoffman in “The Trial of the Chicago 7,” a long-gestating project that Aaron Sorkin (“Molly’s Game”) will direct from his own screenplay. Hoffman and six other defendants were charged with conspiracy and inciting to riot at the 1968 Democratic National Convention.
In the decade-plus since Sorkin wrote the script, Steven Spielberg and Paul Greengrass were planning to direct at various points. Baron Cohen was in the mix to play Hoffman in Spielberg’s proposed version, which was canceled due to the 2007-2008 Writers Guild strike.
On TV, Baron Cohen will play Israeli Mossad agent Eli Cohen in “The Spy” for Netflix and do a second season of his Showtime spoof-interview series “Who Is America?”
Jesse Eisenberg will star in “Resistance” as French mime Marcel Marceau. An Orthodox Jew whose father died in Auschwitz, Marceau worked with the French Resistance during World War II to save the lives of ten of thousands or children whose parents were murdered by the Nazis. Writer-director Jonathan Jakubowicz, a Venezuelan Jew of Polish descent, also lost family during the Holocaust.
Eisenberg, whose mother once worked as a clown at children’s parties, studied mime technique for a year to prepare for the role before production began in Prague, Czech Republic.
