Toronto – Producer David Brady lost his biggest star last month when Angus, the world’s largest captive elephant and subject of his documentary The Giant Walks Home, died shortly before he was to be sent back to Africa.

Brady and director Rob Quartly had been planning to shoot the elephant’s repatriation for three years through Toronto-based Cream Productions. The 27-year-old, seven-tonne animal was found dead on the floor of his barn on Jan. 8, the second day of shooting.

‘It was heartbreaking,’ says Brady.

An autopsy has since determined that Angus, long the star attraction at a nearby zoo, died of a heart attack. The project has been scrapped.

Cream is moving forward on three other projects, however, and late last year was in Belgium for Digging Up the Trenches, a two-hour archeological survey of British and German battlegrounds from WWI. The project marks the first time British and German lines have been unearthed at the same time – bullets found on one side actually matched up with shell casings on the other.

‘It was really neat to see, 150 yards apart, these two trench lines,’ says Brady, who exec produces with producer/director Chris Rowley. Trenches will go to editor Eric Abboud, after recreations are shot this month, and be delivered to History Channel here and in the U.K., among others, by fall.

Cream is also copro’ing the one-hour U-864: Hitler’s Last Deadly Secret with Spiegel TV. The doc, now half shot, concerns a sub that went down off the coast of Norway in the closing days of WWII – with Nazi jet technology and 60 tonnes of mercury on board.

The doc will recount how the sub was sunk and what – now that it’s essentially a time bomb filled with poison – can be done about it. There is a chance the Norwegians will try to raise it in May, says Brady. Marc Brasee of Spiegel TV directs with Rowley.

Recreations will be shot on board a sub in the U.K. and on the old Das Boot set in Munich. ‘It’s amazing; it’s still there,’ says Brady, laughing. ‘It’s a museum piece but they rent it out.’

U-864 has sold to History, BBC 2, The Science Channel in the U.S. and ZDF.

Lastly, the company has teamed with IWC Media for the four-hour The Protestant Revolution, looking at the historical fallout of the Reformation for BBC Four, VisionTV and History in the U.S. Rowley will again direct, under series producer Joseph Maxwell and exec producers Brady and Alan Clements for IWC.