The Trial of the Chicago 7: First trailer for Netflix film features an unrecognisable Sacha Baron Cohen

‘Borat’ actor sports wild hair in Aaron Sorkin’s true-life legal drama

An unrecognisable Sacha Baron Cohen steals the show in the first trailer for Aaron Sorkin’s The Trial of the Chicago 7.

The legal drama, which will debut on Netflix, casts Cohen as one of seven real-life activists who were controversially arrested and put on trial after protesting against the Vietnam war in 1968.

The group, known collectively as the Chicago Seven, were charged with conspiracy by the US federal government and alleged to have crossed state lines in order to incite riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

Cohen, who sports wild hair in his role, appears alongside a starry ensemble that includes Succession’s Jeremy Strong, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Eddie Redmayne, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Mark Rylance and Michael Keaton.

The film has been in development for almost 15 years, with Aaron Sorkin writing the script in 2007 and Steven Spielberg attached to direct.

When Spielberg dropped out of the project, both Ben Stiller and Paul Greengrass were approached to replace him, until Sorkin himself was elected to direct the film from his own script.

Netflix bought the film from Paramount Pictures this summer, Paramount having off-loaded a number of projects to streaming services amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The Trial of the Chicago 7 can be streamed on Netflix from 16 October.