Clint Eastwood’s HUMAN FACTOR Is Now Called INVICTUS

The photo above is from the previous set photos via thebadandugly showing star Matt Damon even more blonde than before on the set of director Clint Eastwood‘s new movie about Nelson Mandela, played by Morgan Freeman. For a while, the assumption was that the project was titled THE HUMAN FACTOR and it was based on Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation by John Carlin. I thought it wasn’t a bad title, it but maybe not Oscar worthy enough which obviously is the objective of this biopic. After tireless research, InContention found out that the new title now is INVICTUS, it’s Latin for ‘Invincible’, it was a short poem written by William Earnest Henley and published in 1875 and it was a great source of inspiration for Nelson Mandela. Here’s a passage from a 2007 Reader’s Digest interview with Mandela: RD: When you were in prison all those long years on Robben Island and elsewhere, was there something that came back to you, something you had either in your mind, a message or passage from a book, a song, something that helped sustain you and keep up your spirits? Mandela: There was a poem by an English poet, W.E. Henley, called “Invictus.” The last lines go: “It matters not how straight the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.” INVICTUS is set to open limited this coming December in time for award consideration season, the story centers on a rugby star Francois Pienaar whose team won the 1995 world up and along with former South African president Mandela created an event that gave the South African whites and blacks together for a common cause as the country healed from years of apartheid.