Bryan Singer‘s Valkyrie, a thriller about the real-life attempted assassination of Adolf Hitler, apparently won’t be filming in Germany due to a German defense ministry ruling denying permission because of star-producer Tom Cruise‘s allegiance to Scientology. The Germans feel that Scientology is a con and not a legitimate religion (whatever that means), but it seems excessive to say “nein” to a major American film company trying to shoot in their country just because of Tom Nutjob. I mean, it’s not like Singer is trying to shoot Battlefield Earth there.
Cruise is going to play Col. Claus von Stauffenberg, the man who led the anti-Hitler plotters. Think about that — Joel Goodsen in Risky Business playing a senior level German military guy during World War II.
For me to truly believe Cruise in that role, Singer is going to have to start Cruise off the way Stanley Kramer started things off for Maximillian Schell in Judgment in Nuremberg — by having him speak German for a couple of scenes, and then work out some visual signal that tells the audience, “Okay, no more German — we’re switching to the English-language. We just didn’t want you to think we’re one of those lame Germany-based American films in which Germans speak nothing but German-accented English.”