{"id":175,"date":"2007-09-14T14:51:24","date_gmt":"2007-09-14T14:51:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/2007\/09\/cruise-movie-gets-ok-to-film-a.php"},"modified":"2007-09-14T14:51:24","modified_gmt":"2007-09-14T14:51:24","slug":"cruise-movie-gets-ok-to-film-a","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2007\/09\/cruise-movie-gets-ok-to-film-a","title":{"rendered":"Cruise Movie Gets OK to Film at Key Site"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Associated Press &#8211; September 14, 2007<br \/>\nBERLIN &#8211; The German government will allow the makers of a movie starring Tom Cruise as the country&#8217;s most famous anti-Hitler plotter to film at the site where the hero was executed.<br \/>\nShooting of &#8220;Valkyrie,&#8221; which has attracted controversy because Cruise is a prominent Scientologist, began in July. At the time, the government didn&#8217;t give permission to shoot at the so-called Bendlerblock &#8211; part of the Defense Ministry and now a memorial to the anti-Nazi resistance &#8211; citing concerns over &#8220;the dignity of the place.&#8221;<br \/>\nDefense Ministry spokesman Thomas Raabe said Friday that filmmakers had satisfied officials in recent talks that they were &#8220;aware of the particular significance&#8221; of the former military headquarters.<br \/>\nUnited Artists Entertainment LLC said in a statement that it was &#8220;extremely grateful to the German government for allowing us to film at the Bendlerblock.&#8221; It pledged to &#8220;take special care to respect its dignity and keep our activities there within the guidelines laid down by the government.&#8221;<br \/>\n&#8220;Filming at the Bendlerblock has always been important to us symbolically, creatively and for the sake of historical authenticity,&#8221; the statement added. &#8220;As a result, we have been in constant communication with the government in an effort to dispel any concerns or misperceptions about the nature of `Valkyrie.'&#8221;<br \/>\nThe movie, directed by Bryan Singer and scheduled for release next year, stars Cruise as Col. Claus Graf Schenk von Stauffenberg &#8211; the aristocratic army officer who was executed after a failed attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler in 1944.<br \/>\nRaabe said it appeared the movie would underline the fact that &#8220;barbarism did not win, but rather a democratic Germany finally arose.&#8221;<br \/>\nStauffenberg and the other plotters of the July 20, 1944, assassination attempt were caught and executed after Hitler survived the explosion at his headquarters in what was then East Prussia.<br \/>\nThe government&#8217;s initial refusal to permit filming at the place where Stauffenberg worked and died led to speculation over whether Cruise&#8217;s religious beliefs had triggered the decision. Officials denied that.<br \/>\nCruise, 45, is one of Scientology&#8217;s best-known members. The German government considers Scientology a commercial enterprise that takes advantage of vulnerable people, and some critics have said one of its adherents shouldn&#8217;t be playing one of the Nazi era&#8217;s few heroes.<br \/>\nBut Raabe said experience with previous filming at the site in 2003 had been a factor in officials&#8217; initial reluctance to grant permission. He didn&#8217;t elaborate.<br \/>\nOfficials have noted that filming permission was granted at all other sites &#8211; among them, the area around the Finance Ministry, which was once the Nazis&#8217; aviation ministry.<br \/>\n<em>Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Associated Press &#8211; September 14, 2007 BERLIN &#8211; The German government will allow the makers of a movie starring Tom Cruise as the country&#8217;s most famous anti-Hitler plotter to film at the site where the hero was executed. Shooting of &#8220;Valkyrie,&#8221; which has attracted controversy because Cruise is a prominent Scientologist, began in July. At&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Cruise Movie Gets OK to Film at Key Site<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2007\/09\/cruise-movie-gets-ok-to-film-a\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Cruise Movie Gets OK to Film at Key Site\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Associated Press &#8211; September 14, 2007 BERLIN &#8211; The German government will allow the makers of a movie starring Tom Cruise as the country&#8217;s most famous anti-Hitler plotter to film at the site where the hero was executed. Shooting of &#8220;Valkyrie,&#8221; which has attracted controversy because Cruise is a prominent Scientologist, began in July. 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Shooting of &#8220;Valkyrie,&#8221; which has attracted controversy because Cruise is a prominent Scientologist, began in July. At&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2007\/09\/cruise-movie-gets-ok-to-film-a","og_site_name":"Beliefnet News","article_published_time":"2007-09-14T14:51:24+00:00","author":"nsymmonds","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2007\/09\/cruise-movie-gets-ok-to-film-a","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2007\/09\/cruise-movie-gets-ok-to-film-a","name":"Cruise Movie Gets OK to Film at Key Site","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website"},"datePublished":"2007-09-14T14:51:24+00:00","dateModified":"2007-09-14T14:51:24+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/f960b23e9c3a51222269c557a209b4f2"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2007\/09\/cruise-movie-gets-ok-to-film-a#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2007\/09\/cruise-movie-gets-ok-to-film-a"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2007\/09\/cruise-movie-gets-ok-to-film-a#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Cruise Movie Gets OK to Film at Key Site"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/","name":"Beliefnet News","description":"Top Religious News From Around the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/f960b23e9c3a51222269c557a209b4f2","name":"nsymmonds","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/13d\/13ddfa3407d6847bc2fbd32a13b67708x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/13d\/13ddfa3407d6847bc2fbd32a13b67708x96.jpg","caption":"nsymmonds"},"description":"Nicole Symmonds is Beliefnet\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Prayer editor and also covers Christianity. A New Yorker by birth but a Floridian by tenure, Nicole graduated from Florida A&M University with a B.S. in Public Relations and a minor in Sociology. She moved to NY to pursue a career in journalism which started at In Style magazine. There she learned the ropes of magazine reporting, researching, and writing\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand became exponentially more stylish. But what seemed like a deep interest in fashion and entertainment would soon be revealed as merely the vehicle that moved her closer to discovering her purpose, writing and covering matters of the Christian faith. While in her purpose-driven vehicle she can be found traveling between Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens for life, work and worship, respectively. From fashion to faith and the journey isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t over yet\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/author\/nsymmonds"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}