When Forest Whitaker won his sole Oscar for Best Actor, it was for playing malicious Ugandan president Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland. While he obviously took to that role tremendously, Whitaker is now ready to play another prominent, but much more peaceful African leader, Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
Whitaker is joining Vince Vaughn in The Archbishop and the Antichrist, a film directed and co-written by Roland Joffe (The Killing Fields) based on the play by co-writer Michael Ashton. The story is a fictionalized account of the meetings between convicted murderer Piet Blomfield (Vaughn) and Archbishop Tutu (Whitaker) as the killer seeks redemption for his crimes while serving a life sentence in prison.
Filming is set to begin next year. Whitaker has an upcoming role in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and Denis Villenueve's sci-fi film, Story of Your Life. Vaughn recently completed the second season of True Detective and is currently filming Mel Gibson's war drama, Hacksaw Ridge.
