Mark Strong has played both heroes and villains and we know he can be funny when it counts. For his next trick, he’s going to have to put up with a rowdy Sacha Baron Cohen, joining the cast of **Grimsby.
With a script from Cohen, Phil Johnston and Peter Baynham, the new comedy finds a top-notch British secret agent (Strong) forced to go on the lam with his long-lost, loud-mouthed brother (Cohen), a football hooligan who hails from… well, you can work that out from the title. Now You See Me director Louis Leterrier will be bringing his action background to the film, which will be more along the lines of The Dictator than Cohen’s ambush-style comedy of Borat and Bruno.
Sony is backing this one, working alongside Nira Park and Big Talk productions, but there’s no word on an exact start date yet.
Strong, who was last seen in Welcome To The Punch, will crop up in Turing tale The Imitation Game, drama **Before I Go To Sleep **and Matthew Vaughn’s latest dip into Mark Millar’s canon, The Secret Service, because some things are traditions that must be upheld. We hope Strong escapes the Cohen experience unscathed and with his dignity intact. It may be his tougest challenge yet.