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Sacha Baron Cohen was almost part of the X-Men movies

By Dan Selcke

LOS ANGELS - NOVEMBER 7: Borat Sagdiyev, played by actor Saha Baron Cohen, attends a book signing for his new book "BORAT: Touristic Guidings to Minor Nation of U.S. and A. and Touristic Guidings to Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan" at Borders on November 7, 2007 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Vince Bucci/Getty Images)
LOS ANGELS - NOVEMBER 7: Borat Sagdiyev, played by actor Saha Baron Cohen, attends a book signing for his new book "BORAT: Touristic Guidings to Minor Nation of U.S. and A. and Touristic Guidings to Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan" at Borders on November 7, 2007 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Vince Bucci/Getty Images) /
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Sacha Baron Cohen, best known for playing Borat, was very nearly in The New Mutants as an iconic X-Men character. Bullet dodged or were we robbed?

Sacha Baron Cohen is a very solid actor who, for better is worse, will probably always be best known for running bare-ass naked through a hotel in the Borat movie, amongst other assorted shenanigans.

But there’s always hope of rebranding. In fact, The New Mutants director Josh Boone recently told Nerdist that he seriously considered casting Cohen as Warlock, and he would’ve done it, too, if not for those pesky budget restrictions.

Briefly, Warlock is a giant robotic alien creature from a race called the Technarchy who travel the galaxy infecting people with a techno-organic virus that drains them of their life energy. They’re pretty tough customers, but Warlock actually had empathy, which made him a “mutant” in the eyes of his people. And of course, X-Men is all about mutants.

In the comics, Warlock becomes an important member of the New Mutants. Cohen is a little older than the other actors in the movie, but Boone intended for him to play Warlock like Andy Serkis played Gollum in The Lord of the Rings: there would have been a lot of special effects and green screen stuff involved, so we probably wouldn’t have seen much of what Cohen actually looked like onscreen.

Ultimately, Boone had to decide between including Cohen as Warlock or the Demon Bear, who shows up in the trailer for the movie. He made his choice, but if The New Mutants is successful Cohen could always come back for a sequel…

After a legendary amount of delays, The New Mutants is finally opening in theaters on August 27. Should you actually go see it, given that the coronavirus is still spreading around the United States? That’s another question entirely.

Next. How introducing the X-Men could change the MCU forever. dark

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