Talk about big shoes to fill. If the Queen was recently portrayed will creative accuracy and the press awarded Whitaker for his take on the president of Uganda, then perhaps these shoes are perhaps only NBA-sized. Variety reports that Morgan Freeman will play former South African President Nelson Mandela.
Based on the John Carlin book, and scripted by Anthony Peckham, The Human Factor is set after the fall of apartheid, when South Africa was host to the 1995 Rugby World Cup. Mandela (Freeman) was in his first term as South African president, and he used the event as a way to end decades of mistrust and hatred between whites and blacks.
Freeman (who has the sort of relationship with Mandela that probably sees the two exchange X-mas cards) has been circling the role for a while now – he will produce the pic with his Revelations Entertainment partner Lori McCreary and Mace Neufeld.
Freeman was once attached to play the inspirational leader in another project. The Long Walk to Freedom – an autobiography on Mandela released back in 1995 with much of it was penned during his 27-year imprisonment on Robben Island by South Africa's apartheid regime. Shekhar Kapur was named to direct that project.