Variety.com said Damon will play Francois Pienaar, who along with Nelson Mandela, orchestrated an event that gave white people and black people in South Africa a common cause to rally around in the wake of apartheid -- the 1985 Rugby World Cup.

The movie, co-starring Morgan Freeman as Mandela, is a big-screen adaptation of John Carlin's book "The Human Factor: Nelson Mandela and the Game that Changed the World," the entertainment industry trade paper said.