Idris Elba to Play Nelson Mandela after Morgan Freeman
‘Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom’ is the upcoming movie based
on Nelson Mandela’s autobiographical work in the book ‘Long Walk to Freedom’. The
book chronicles his
early life, education and those 27 years in prison through
to his rise in politics.
The movie will see Idris Elba play the South African
President. Yes, this is the same Idris Elba who will feature in Pacific Rim as Stacker
Pentecost. It is quite a drastic switch
in terms of genre but we must notice that he plays leaders in both movies and
he has won a Golden Globe for Luthor. The role is definitely in good hands.
The teaser is positively quite inspiring in terms of the
speech given, and if it is Elba that is giving that rousing pep talk then he
has successfully mastered one aspect of Mandela’s portrayal, his voice.
A bigger question in my mind though is whether his
performance can outshine that of Morgan Freeman’s in Invictus. He has from,
this little teaser, proven to have some control over voice but we haven’t seen
him as Mandela on screen yet. It might
also be an unfair match up given that Freeman only focused on a few years in
the President’s life, during the 1995 Rugby World Cup. Elba’s job will entail depicting
decades of the President’s lifetime so he has more to work with. He will also
be engrossed in a younger time period making the criteria for comparison
difficult to determine. On the other
hand, he also has more to screw up. It’s still too early to jump to any radical
conclusions, but this could be potentially Oscar-winning material for the
actor.
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| Teaser Poster |
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