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Eric Bana to play Piet Blomfield in Tutu film

Johannesburg - Producers confirmed this week that Incredible Hulk star Eric Bana would play the role of apartheid-era murderer Piet Blomfield in an upcoming film about Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu’s role in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).

Australian Bana appears to have replaced US actor Vince Vaughn in the role.

Bana is the latest Hollywood star confirmed for the film, called The Forgiven, joining Academy Award winner Forest Whitaker, who will play the Arch.

Whitaker’s casting has raised the ire of local audiences and film industry professionals when it was announced last year.

Many asked, again, why a South African actor couldn’t be cast for a South African role.

Despite Whitaker having played African characters successfully before – the 55-year-old actor gained prominence, and an Oscar, for his outstanding portrayal of Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in the 2006 box office hit The Last King of Scotland – detractors said that local actors like John Kani and Jerry Mofokeng could play the role just as well.

The film, due for release in 2017, will be directed by English-born French film director Roland Joffé, who is responsible for the Oscar-winning films The Killing Fields and The Mission.

The Forgiven will be the first time that writer Michael Ashton’s play, called The Archbishop and The Antichrist, will be turned into a screenplay.

The script follows a series of meetings between Tutu and Blomfield, a former member of an apartheid-era hit squad who makes a series of chilling confessions to him from his prison cell during the TRC hearings.

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