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Turns out, these photos are not really part of Sergeant Slaughter My Big Brother, as I thought before. In fact, they are stills from a trailer/promo Greg Williams & Tom Hardy did called Bin Man. The Bin Man trailer/promo is how they sold Samarkand as a feature film!

I’d seen Bin Man mentioned before, but the clues didn’t fall into place until I saw this site:

We designed, propped, and supplied all art dept personel for this promotional shoot, which went on to be Greg Williams and Tom Hardy project Samarkand.

Still no word on when Samarkand might get filmed, though. But I found a quote from the producer Bobby Panescu:

I met [Tom Hardy] last year at Cannes. He will not only be the lead actor, he’ll also co-produce alongside Greg Williams and myself. It will shoot in England and Qatar. The movie deals with PTSD syndrome (Posttraumatic Stress Disorder). A British SAS special forces soldier returns from Iraq and develop this syndrome, starting a war alone.

Tom Hardy went to Botswana (and other countries, probably) in January this year to film a documentary. It’s been a little unclear what it’s about and what it’s called. First, it was supposedly what originally was his trip down the river Congo, called Tom Hardy’s African Adventure. It’s also been known as Tom Hardy’s African Conservation.

But the latest info I’ve found on this is from a guy who’s doing the score for the documentary: Nick Harvey. According to him, this project is now called Tom Hardy’s War on Poaching (and will be shown on UK’s ITV1). This intrigues me and makes me wonder if it’s a prelude to those two planned anti-poaching films (with Leonardo Dicaprio and Tobey Maquire), or if it’s instead of them… I’m hoping for the former! And I’m guessing this documentary will be the next project we’ll see from Tom - I’m guessing it’ll be aired this year.

(Photos are thanks to tomhardy.org)

I only just now realised something about this second part of Sergeant Slaughter My Big Brother (directed by Greg Williams), depicted in the photos above, This part of the short film wasn’t included in the final edit, and it struck me that it’s most likely because of the Samarkand project.

Samarkand is a story about a man returning to the UK from a war zone in the Middle East, with PTSD. And SSMBB was about a guy who joined the foreign legion and who - in the part we haven’t seen - returned looking a LOT worse for wear. Maybe homeless, definitely psychologically damaged.

My theory is that they left this out from the short film, in order to make it into a feature film, i.e. Samarkand. :)

Latest news from IndieWire is that Belgian actor Matthias Schoenaerts is joining Tom & Noomi in Animal Rescue, the film shooting this spring in New York. It’s looking better and better, this film. I’ve loved Matthias in what I’ve seen (Rust & Bone, Bullhead), and he’s been compared to Tom, so this will be interesting indeed. 

We chatted with Schoenaerts yesterday afternoon, just before the Césars, and he shared with us what his plans for the New Year will be. “I’ll be shooting in New York with Michael Roskam, we’re shooting his first American feature film,” Schoenaerts said. “I have a supporting role in that, and I really look forward to it.” The movie in question is “Animal Rescue,” which locked up Tom Hardy and Noomi Rapace in the lead roles last month, with the Fox Searchlight production gearing up for a spring shoot.

Based on a short story by Dennis Lehane (“Mystic River,” “Gone Baby Gone”), the story follows a lonely New York bartender, caught in the midst of a bad heist and a killing, who rescues a puppy from a garbage can and becomes the target of the dog’s abusive and mentally unstable former owner. Rapace will play Nadia, who has a scar across her neck, who crosses paths with the bartender. There’s no word just yet on Schoenaerts’ part, but with the actor already making an impression on arthouse screens, this will undoubtedly bring his immense skills to a more mainstream crowd.

(Source: blogs.indiewire.com)