Ali G is back on October 23, and Sweden has already pulled him from theaters

Ali G: Who Iz I? — Sacha Baron Cohen's secretly shot revival of his 1998 character, and his directorial debut — opens October 23. In Sweden, it doesn't: MovieZine noticed on October 19 that the film had been removed from the Filmstaden chain's website days before its listed premiere.

The explanation tour went in a circle. Filmstaden's press office referred questions to the distributor, SF Studios; SF Studios referred everything to Amazon; Amazon didn't answer. The film is now expected to go straight to Prime Video in Sweden, date unknown.

How a comeback became a boycott target

The Swedish disappearance didn't happen in a vacuum. The campaign against the film has been building since the trailer dropped:

• A UK campaign arguing the character is a racist caricature — the fake dreadlocks, the Rastafarian-style hat, the patois — has sent about 37,000 complaint emails to cinemas worldwide, per The Hollywood Reporter. The UK's Picturehouse chain was among the first to decline the film.
• At the October 14 world premiere at the Hollywood Legion Theater, Baron Cohen arrived in character and, asked about the Paramount–Warner merger, answered as Ali G: "The only merger that's happening tonight is me and Sydney Sweeney's babylons." The clip restarted the cancellation calls from a fresh angle.
• His formal response to all of it, posted October 7, was an Instagram sketch in which he played a balding activist from the fictional "Campaign for Ethical Comedy" demanding a boycott of himself.

Baron Cohen's own framing of the comeback was a dare from the start: "In an age where a comedian's career can be ended by a single un-PC joke, I thought I'd play it safe and bring this guy back."

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Ali G: Who Iz I? lost its Swedish theatrical release four days before the premiere, and Filmstaden, SF Studios and Amazon all declined to say why.

The promise he's made before

In the interview accompanying the release, Baron Cohen told The Hollywood Reporter this is his last guerrilla comedy — the threats and hostility have become too much to keep absorbing, and he's received death threats since the Borat films. He also explained why he did it one more time anyway:

"Because I'm terrified of where our society is headed, and the way I can comment on that is through my comedy."

— Sacha Baron Cohen, to The Hollywood Reporter

The catch is the track record: he said Borat Subsequent Moviefilm was his final outing as Borat, repeated it after the Oscar nominations, and is now releasing a film built on the same undercover method. Reddit's reaction to the comeback has centered less on the controversy than on the repetition:

"Is he just cycling through his 3 caricatures endlessly? Borat, Ali G, Bruuno ?"

— r/entertainment commenter (277 upvotes)

The commercial question underneath is whether a character born on British TV in 1998 can sell tickets to anyone who wasn't there. One commenter's local report — one showing per day at their cinema (29 upvotes) — suggests exhibitors have already placed their bet. By October 26, there will be a number attached.

Previously we wrote: 'Borderline false advertising': Disney sells Hexed with a style the movie doesn't have