There were clues once they arrived, but per Cohen\'s uncanny abilityto pull wool

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The movie Bruno is still in production and fans have yet to see even a piece ofrough footage, but there's already publicity building for SachaBaron Cohen's next foray into over-the-top comedy.

Several recent stunts—like cage fights that turned intohomoerotic episodes, staged in Arkansas, no less, and a formerMossad officer "punk'd" in public—are heating up theblogosphere about Bruno . The movie is Cohen's follow-up to the mega-hit Borat , set for release next summer.

In grabbing attention so early, whether by design or accident, Bruno faces the thorny issue of how to break through in a packedmarketplace without oversaturating potential moviegoers long beforethe movie launches.

Call it the Snakes on a Plane dilemma.

"Believe it or not, there is such a thing as too much mediaattention," said Paul Silver, former president of marketing atColumbia Pictures and now head of marketing consultancy Beyond theBox. "If it feels manufactured, then that's problematic. Right now,what's happening around Bruno appears organic. That's why so many people are interested."

Intense prepublicity hasn't hurt Warner Bros.' The Dark Knight, which recently topped $300 million at the box office quicker thanany other film in history and could be on its way to Titanic -sized grosses. It didn't help the studio's Speed Racer , though, considered one of the big flops of the summer, or theParamount comedy The Love Guru , which had a considerable marketing push from star Mike Meyers.

Bruno , a flamboyantly gay Austrian fashionista, is based on a characterfrom Cohen's Da Ali G Show . He's a celebrity interviewer, a favorite tact of the comedian,which allows him to put unsuspecting people on the spot by askingquestions that can lead to revealing, ridiculous and politicallyincorrect answers.

After the jaw-dropping $261-million worldwide success of Borat , several Hollywood studios got into a bidding war for Cohen's nextbrainchild. Universal eventually won, forking over some $42million, including production budget, for rights to release Bruno .

Unlike Borat , where little was known ahead of time about its guerrilla filmingtactics, Bruno is being scrutinized while still in its formative stages. Thefilming itself, however covert, is becoming part of the awarenessbuilder, just as Cohen has become a magnet for press and publicity.

"Showmanship is so much a part of this business, and he reallyunderstands that," Silver said. "It's part of his brilliance."

Though Cohen could fly under the radar for Borat , many in the industry assumed he could never pull public stuntsfor another project. Apparently that's not the case, and culturalanthropologist and marketing consultant Robert Deutsch said itcould be because people want to play along with the talented Cohen.

"He's a court jester, from a long line of seminal characters inhistory," he said. "He says things that no one else can say."

The studio wouldn't comment on the movie, nor would Cohen's reps,all saying it's too soon to discuss either content or marketing.They wouldn't say if they're concerned about the attention or ifthey're taking any steps to avoid a prerelease avalanche the sizeof Snakes on a Plane , which turned out to have more momentum as a viral campaign thanit did as a box office draw.

Plenty of other people are talking, though, including local lawenforcement in Arkansas that dealt with a melee that broke out whentwo grapplers at a cage fight started, well, really grappling. Fanshad been told there would be $1 beer, hot chicks and the like, inaddition to the mixed martial arts bout, and 1,600 showed up inTexarkana earlier this summer.

There were clues once they arrived, but per Cohen's uncanny abilityto pull wool over people's eyes, no one seemed to know what wascoming. They signed waivers giving permission to be filmed, andthere were notices tacked up at the venue that filming would behappening, according to the Associated Press and other reports.

Instead of some light petting, which local authorities had beentold would be part of a prank, the men "went right up to the line"of the city's morality laws, Fort Smith police Sgt. Adam Hollandtold the A.P. That involved stripping, kissing, rubbing—withthe crowd's reaction all caught on tape. Whatfollowed—jeering, beer hurling, chair throwing—tookpolice 45 minutes to disperse.

By going to the South, Bruno returned to a favorite stompingground. He often interviewed residents there as the character in Da Ali G Show .

But the stunts didn't end in the U.S., with Cohen tricking aretired Mossad agent and current political analyst into discussingIsraeli-Palestinian issues with him during filming in Jerusalem.That talk included Cohen, pretending to be a German rock star,getting Hamas confused with the chickpea spread hummus and sayingthe Israeli-Palestinian conflict wasn't as bad as the JenniferAniston-Angelina Jolie battle over Brad Pitt.

The agent, Yossi Alpher, suspected he was being punk'd, butsoldiered on until the end of the interview anyway, he later wrotein an online column about the incident. Unlike a number of peoplewho got swept up in the Borat chicanery, Alpher said he doesn't plan to sue.