It's probably not fair to say that everything Forest Whitaker has starred in since The Last King of Scotland has been subpar. It's pretty close, though. He made a decent supporting appearance in Denzel Washington's The Great Debaters, but otherwise it's been a tough slog for the Oscar winner both in front of and behind the camera. He's currently prepping a sequel to his biggest directorial hit, Waiting to Exhale, but those plans have been thrown a curveball due to the untimely passing of Whitney Houston.
In what is basically a total 180 from his award winning performance as brutal Ugandan dictator, Idi Amin, Screen Daily reports Whitaker is now set to play South African human rights activist archbishop Desmond Tutu in The Archbishop and the Antichrist, from director Roland Joffe(City of Joy). Joffe adapted the film based on a play Michael Ashton, about a fictional meeting between Tutu and a white South African mass murderer during the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings, established after the end of apartheid.
This one is still very early on in development, but there's already reason for optimism. Whitaker can be an amazing presence with the right material, and after a down period Joffe made a solid comeback last year with There Be Dragons, detailing two lives touched by the Spanish Civil War.
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