Sacha Baron Cohen is trading the screen for the stage. The 54-year-old actor has been cast in the title role of The Popinjay Cavalier, the first play written by Quentin Tarantino, according to sources who spoke to The Hollywood Reporter. Deadline reported the casting separately, per JoBlo.

It's a double debut. Baron Cohen has never done a West End show. Tarantino, best known for Pulp Fiction and Inglourious Basterds, has never written one either. The production comes from Sonia Friedman Productions and Sony Pictures Entertainment, and it's being pitched as a "swashbuckling comedy" set in 1830s Europe.

Producers describe it as "a rambunctious comedy of deception and disguise inspired by the grand swashbuckling epics of stage and screen." JoBlo, citing the official synopsis, adds that it's meant to be "a sweeping celebration of theatre and its heightened romance, told with Tarantino's signature style and unmistakable wit." Beyond that, nobody's saying much. No venue has been locked down yet, and reports differ slightly on timing. The Hollywood Reporter and Just Jared both peg the opening for spring 2027, while JoBlo says the play is being developed for an early 2027 debut.

Tarantino has talked about this project before, if not by name. In comments quoted by JoBlo from last year, he called the play "absolutely the next thing I'm going to do" and said the script was already finished. He talked about starting production in January and estimated the whole thing could eat up a year and a half to two years of his life, depending on how it goes. "I'm preparing for it to be a success," he said. "If it's a flop, then I'll be done very quickly."

For Baron Cohen, the stage role lands in the middle of a genuinely packed run. Ali G: Who Iz I?, which brings back his hip-hop journalist character two decades on, opens globally through Amazon MGM on October 23. The plot, per Just Jared, has Ali G discovering his girlfriend Julie is eight months pregnant and heading to America to chase one last shot at relevance, only to run into people who want him gone for good.

His IMDb page also lists Super Toys and Mandrake the Magician as films in the pipeline, on top of recent work including the Netflix comedy Ladies First and an appearance in Prime Video's Balls Up.

What none of the reporting nails down yet is the rest of the Popinjay cast, or who's directing a play written by a man who has spent three decades directing his own scripts for the screen. Tarantino has said he's done making movies after his next one. Whether the theatre becomes the next chapter, or a one-off experiment, probably depends on how London receives him.