Who Would Play the General?

So, Paul Di Filippo gives a really glowing review over on SciFiWire to Theodore Judson's The Martian General's Daughter,and this really brightens my day, because I'm really excited by this book, and I want everyone else to be too. But rather than just repeat what he says here, as is my norm, I'll just ask that you read it for yourself, and I'll cut to this tangent, from his postscript at the very end:

Alas, the perfect actor to play Gen. Black in the film version of this book is dead: I can see David Niven bestriding the ruins of the Pan-Polaric empire as clearly as I see Beyonce as Justa!

Which resulted in a half-dozen emails back and forth between Paul and I, and an entirely separate half-dozen emails between Judson's agent Richard Curtis and I, in which names like Sean Connery and Christopher Plummer were thrown out, until it hit me that there one and only best possible choice for Gen. Peter Black is John Neville.

Don't you agree?