More than one year ago, our own Todd Brown reported that Bullhead director Michael Roskam planned to follow up that powerful, hard-hitting film with The Faithful, described as a "romance-crime-tragedy [set] against the backdrop of the ultra-violent criminal gangs of 1990s Brussels." Now we hear from Variety that Bullhead star Matthias Schoenaerts will be top-lining the picture.
Between the debut of Bullhead last year and now, both Roskam and Schoenaerts have become very busy. Roskam is co-writing with Michael Mann a pilot script for HBO crime series Buda Bridge, and is also set to direct the fact-based The Tiger (about a man-eating tiger in Russia).
Meanwhile, Schoenaerts has appeared in the lead role in Jacques Audiard's Rust and Bone -- out soon in the U.S. -- and plans to make a documentary about a friend whose leg was amputated, according to Variety. He will also be starring in The Ardennes, about "three young Belgian losers who embark on a fateful trip ... to get rid of a corpse."
So, while The Faithful may have been delayed a bit (Roskam is currently working on the screenplay with another writer), patience may be well-rewarded if Roskam and Schoenaerts can deliver another picture in the vicinity of Bullhead, quality-wise.