Jealous Harvey Weinstein Stakes His Own Claim to ‘Valkyrie’ Debacle

Amid all of Tuesday’s post-holiday hustle and bustle, we regrettably overlooked perhaps the most profound news item of the day: Harvey Weinstein indirectly hopped in the Valkyrie fray at Cannes by picking up US theatrical/DVD rights to Operation Valkyrie, a 2004 German retelling of the failed plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler. It’s the same film Tom Cruise and Bryan Singer made (or are making, with worse accents) only to see it bumped twice to a Feb. 2009 release-date Siberia by Cruise/UA’s partners at MGM — oddly the same folks with whom The Weinstein Company shares its own distribution deal. Small world, eh? It gets even weirder — kind of.

Originally made for TV, the German Valkyrie features The Lives of Others/Black Book actor Sebastian Koch as the eyepatched, would-be Hitler killer Col. Claus von Stauffenberg — also Cruise’s role in the American version. Cruise, meanwhile, stars opposite Carice van Houten — Koch’s Black Book co-star and real-life love interest. If Harvey has the balls (and/or the cash) to release Operation Valkyrie theatrically, especially before Singer’s Valkyrie emerges from hiding, look forward to the most spectacularly awkward Tom Cruise premiere ever.

• TWC buys up German ‘Valkyrie’ [Variety via Lou Lumenick]