Booyakasha! Ali G Is Back After 20 Years — Watch the First Trailer for Who Iz I?

There are certain characters you assume you've probably seen for the final time.

Ali G was one of them.

As his career expanded into Hollywood, Sacha Baron Cohen largely moved away from the character that made him famous, while Borat became the alter ego he was most willing to revive.

But after years of occasional appearances and rumours, Ali is getting another movie.

Ali G: Who Iz I? brings Cohen back as Alistair Leslie Graham, the spectacularly clueless wannabe gangster who considers West Staines one of the most important places on Earth.

This isn't simply Ali G Indahouse 2, though.

Instead, Cohen has taken the character into the mockumentary territory that helped turn Borat into an international phenomenon.

Ali claims cameras have followed him for more than a year while he interacts with real people rather than actors.

What could possibly go wrong?

Quite a lot, judging by the trailer.

Twenty years can change a man.

Apparently they haven't changed Ali G very much.

The official premise reveals that Ali has spent the intervening years doing precisely the sort of things you'd expect Ali G to have been doing. His comfortable existence is suddenly interrupted when he discovers that his longtime girlfriend Julie is eight months pregnant.

British comedian and impressionist Morgana Robinson plays Julie this time.

Faced with the terrifying prospect of having another mouth to feed, Ali decides there is only one sensible solution.

Get famous again.

His attempt to reclaim his former glory takes him to America, where the combination of Ali G and unsuspecting members of the public provides the basis for the new movie.

The trailer shows Ali stumbling through conversations about pregnancy, politics, the military, social media and modern culture.

Twenty years of technological and social change have happened while Ali has apparently been doing absolutely nothing.

Which might be exactly why bringing him back now could work.

Ali G may have travelled around the world, interviewed politicians, and somehow found himself inside the Houses of Parliament, but one place has always been at the centre of his universe.

Staines.

Or more specifically, West Staines.

Sacha Baron Cohen's fictional wannabe gangster turned the Surrey town into an unlikely part of British pop culture during the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Anyone who watched Da Ali G Show remembers the rivalry.

West Staines was where the real players supposedly lived.

East Staines?

Let's just say Ali wasn't particularly complimentary.

The joke became so closely associated with the town that, more than two decades later, Ali G's return has once again put Staines-upon-Thames in entertainment headlines.

There is something wonderfully strange about that.

Ali G was created as a parody of a very particular type of late-1990s British youth culture, yet his fictional relationship with Staines became almost as famous as the character himself.

A generation that grew up watching him still immediately understands what "West Staines Massive" means.

That is some serious cultural staying power.

Before Borat travelled across America and long before Sacha Baron Cohen became an Oscar-nominated actor and writer, there was Ali G.

The character first appeared on Channel 4's The 11 O'Clock Show in 1998.

The concept was beautifully simple.

Ali presented himself as a streetwise youth interviewer, asking politicians, academics, and public figures questions so spectacularly stupid that many didn't quite know how to respond.

It worked.

Ali became one of the era's breakout British comedy characters and soon graduated to Da Ali G Show.

Then came the movie.

Ali G Indahouse arrived in cinemas in 2002 and abandoned the unsuspecting-interview format for a full fictional story in which Ali somehow became involved in British politics.

Was it sophisticated?

Absolutely not.

Did an entire generation spend the next few years shouting "Booyakasha" at each other?

Absolutely.

Ali G became one of those characters permanently attached to a particular moment in British popular culture — yellow tracksuit, coloured glasses, enormous jewellery and all.

And now he's walking straight into 2026.

This might be the most interesting part of Who Iz I?

Rather than simply making another scripted Ali G comedy, Cohen has changed the format.

The new film uses real-world encounters and unsuspecting participants, bringing Ali much closer to the style Cohen perfected with Borat, Brüno, and later Who Is America?

That's potentially a very smart decision.

Ali G was at his funniest when somebody sitting opposite him was desperately attempting to have a serious conversation while Ali completely misunderstood virtually everything they said.

The trailer suggests we're getting plenty of that again.

It also gives Cohen something he didn't have when Ali first appeared.

Twenty years of new material.

Social media. TikTok. Smartphones. Influencers. Culture wars. Artificial intelligence. Modern American politics.

Imagine attempting to explain any of that to Ali G.

Actually, don't.

We're about to watch people try.

Another significant difference this time around.

Sacha Baron Cohen isn't only playing Ali G.

He's also directing the movie.

Ali G: Who Iz I? marks Cohen's feature directorial debut, giving him considerably more control over the character's return.

That's particularly interesting given how much his comedy has evolved since Ali G Indahouse.

Mark Mylod directed the original movie and later became known for work including Succession and The Menu.

Cohen, meanwhile, went on to develop the hidden-camera comedy style that made Borat such a phenomenon.

Bringing those two strands of his career together — the character who made him famous and the filmmaking style he later perfected — could be exactly what a modern Ali G movie needs.

That's the big question.

Ali G belongs so completely to the late 1990s and early 2000s that resurrecting him more than two decades later could easily have felt like nostalgia for nostalgia's sake.

Comedy has changed.

Britain has changed.

America has changed.

The internet has completely transformed how quickly people recognise celebrities and characters, which creates an obvious challenge when your entire comedy format depends on people not realising who they're talking to.

But Ali G also has one advantage.

He was never really the joke.

The funniest moments usually came from watching supposedly serious people attempt to respond to him.

Cohen used an idiot in a tracksuit to lower people's defences, and sometimes they revealed considerably more than they intended.

If Who Iz I? can rediscover that rather than simply repeating old catchphrases, Ali might have more reason to return than we expected.

And if it can't?

Well, we'll always have West Staines.

We won't have to wait long to find out whether Ali G can conquer the world for a second time.

Ali G: Who Iz I? arrives in cinemas on 23 October 2026, with Amazon MGM Studios behind the release.

It will be Ali's first feature-length cinema adventure since Ali G Indahouse arrived 24 years earlier.

A lot has happened since 2002.

We've had several prime ministers, the rise of social media, smartphones, streaming, TikTok and an entirely different entertainment landscape.

Ali G, meanwhile, appears to have learned absolutely nothing.

Some things are better left unchanged.

Booyakasha.