LONDON - Ali G is back, and he brought roughly 300 of his closest tracksuit-wearing friends with him. Sacha Baron Cohen staged a mass look-alike takeover of central London on Monday, sending a swarm of Ali G impersonators through the city's streets to promote his upcoming comedy "Who Iz I?," which he directed and in which he reprises his signature character after a two-decade absence from the screen.

The stunt, which turned heads from the West End toward the Thames, served as the film's unofficial coming-out party ahead of its October 22, 2026 release. According to the studio, the gathering was designed to reintroduce audiences to Alistair Leslie Graham - the would-be "voice of the youth" whose blend of faux-street slang, yellow tracksuits and relentless, cheerfully clueless questioning made him a fixture of British television in the early 2000s.

A Pregnancy, an Exit, and a Trip to America

The film's official synopsis wastes no time upending Ali G's comfortable stagnation. After twenty years spent "chillin', tokin' and bonin'," he learns that his long-term girlfriend, Julie - played by Morgana Robinson - is eight months pregnant. The revelation that he is about to become a father sends him scrambling: strapped for cash and facing what the logline calls an "extra mouth to feed," he "gets off his batty" and heads to America to chase his former fame.

That journey, per the synopsis, doesn't go smoothly. Ali G "soon encounters adversaries who will ultimately threaten his and his child's very existence," a turn that suggests the comedy may lean harder on stakes than the character's earlier mock-interview outings did.

Baron Cohen returns as both leading man and director, stepping behind the camera for a project that also resurrects two of his other creations. The cast listing credits him as Ali G alongside Borat Sagdiyev and Erran Morad, plus Dr. Nira Cain-N'Degeocello - a lineup that hints the film may function as a kind of multi-character reunion. Robinson co-stars as Julie, and C. Stewart Rodeheaver appears as himself. Beyond that confirmed trio at the top of the call sheet, the studio has kept plot mechanics under wraps.

A Character Built on Ambush, Now Selling a Narrative

Ali G first surfaced on British television in the late 1990s and quickly became a cultural phenomenon, largely on the strength of Baron Cohen's willingness to stay in character while interviewing politicians, academics and celebrities who often had no idea they were being mocked. The character's transition to a scripted feature is an unusual one - his previous big-screen outing was an ambush-style comedy, whereas "Who Iz I?" is built around an actual storyline involving fatherhood and cross-Atlantic ambition.

Whether audiences will follow Ali G into a scripted, domestic-drama-adjacent frame is the central commercial question facing the film. The London look-alike event appears to be an early bet that nostalgia, plus the sheer visual absurdity of hundreds of men in matching tracksuits, can do the heavy lifting on awareness.

What the marketing campaign has not yet revealed is how heavily Borat, Morad and Cain-N'Degeocello figure into the proceedings. Trade watchers have noted only that the film is classified as a comedy, runs in English, and is being positioned as a Hollywood production - no runtime has been announced.

The release lands in a crowded autumn corridor, though the studio has so far declined to discuss projections or comparable titles in any detail. For now, the film's greatest asset is arguably the same one Ali G has always relied on: the ability to make strangers stop and stare.

"Who Iz I?" opens in theaters on October 22, 2026. Baron Cohen directs and stars; Robinson and Rodeheaver round out the announced cast. Further promotional events are expected in the coming days, though the studio has not confirmed what form they will take - or how many tracksuits they will require.

Source: Hollywood Reporter