Valkyrie gets delayed

What’s a good time of year to release a WWII thriller that focuses only on the Germans?

If you said February, you’d be correct. For the moment.

Bryan Singer’s fact-based action film VALKYRIE has been bounced from its intended October 3rd release to February 13th of 2009. Because nothing says “Happy Valentine’s Day” like an eyepatched Tom Cruise in full goose-stepping garb. Dreamy!

The UA/MGM movie has already been shifted once — it was originally scheduled for release this June, and will now fall outside of consideration for the upcoming award season. The studio says the new bump is to “take advantage of an opening in the schedule for the Presidents Day weekend,” which roughly translates to “We hope by then you’ll forget about that embarrassing Scientology video and whatever other goofy shit Tom does in public this year.”

VALKYRIE revolves around several high-ranking German officers who plot to kill Hitler. I’ve got a pretty good idea how that will end (Hitler’s brain is transplanted into a cyborg gorilla, if I remember my history), but at least it has an impressive cast — Cruise, Kenneth Branagh, Bill Nighy, Tom Wilkinson, Eddie Izzard, Terence Stamp, Carice Van Houten and Thomas Kretschmann (an actual German!).