When a few great new images from Brad Pitt’s next film, Cogan’s Trade, surfaced this week, we were still none the wiser about when exactly the film would be coming to the big screen this year.

It looks like The Weinstein Company have now put a date on the calendar, with The Playlist reporting that the film will be released in the States on 21st September, which puts it in prime position for going to perhaps both of Venice Film Festival and Toronto International Film Festival, which are running from 29th August to 8th September and 6th to 16th September this year, respectively.

The film sees Pitt reunite with Andrew Dominik, the writer-director of The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, who’s adapted the 1974 novel of the same name by George V. Higgins. Though no official synopsis has been released yet for the film, here’s what the book’s looks like, courtesy of Amazon:

“[Cogan’s Trade] tracks Jackie Cogan’s career in a gangland version of law and order. For Cogan is an enforcer; and when the Mob’s rules get broken, he gets hired to ply his trade — murder. In the gritty, tough-talking pages of Higgins’s 1974 national best-seller, Cogan is called in when a high-stake card game under the protection of the Mob is heisted. Expertly, with a ruthless businessman’s efficiency, a shrewd sense of other people’s weaknesses, and a style as cold as his stare, Cogan moves with reliable precision to restore the status quo as ill-conceived capers and double-dealing shenanigans erupt into high-voltage violence.”

Along with Pitt, the supporting cast is pretty damn fantastic, including the likes of James Gandolfini, Richard Jenkins, Ray Liotta, Bella Heathcote, and Scoot McNairy, who was just brilliant in the 2010 indie film Monsters (one of my favourite films in the past few years), and will also be starring in Ben Affleck’s upcoming Argo, which is due out in the UK on 5th October.

Though there’s still no word yet on a UK release date for Cogan’s Trade, hopefully we’ll be getting it towards the end of September too, because this is a film I’ve been looking forward to for what feels like forever, and I can’t wait to see how it turns out. It may be jumping the gun a bit, but I’ve already mentally reserved a slot for it on my Top Films of 2012 list.