Director Bryan Singer is excited about Valkyrie... which is more than can be said for others around Hollywood.

The controversial movie stars Tom Cruise and is based around a plot to assassinate Hitler. No wonder it's been the subject of controversy.

MTV recently caught up with Singer and asked him about the film:

MTV: Did all the negative hype get to you?
Singer: I'm used to speculation because of "X-Men" and "Superman Returns," so it's not something that was a surprise to me, but it does weigh on you. It's an extra stress and an extra burden, because in the end, all the Germans really want from this story is it to be told well. When I would read speculation while I was making "X-Men," I would remind myself that the best I can do for these people is make a great movie. I can't do anything about their speculation. I'm not Hitler.

I can't blot it out. I want people to see the film. It's a film that people need to see before they judge. It opens with a bit of a bang, and then, about a third of the way in, a little ticking clock starts, and it moves faster and faster right up until the last frame. And you get to see Tom Cruise come face to face with Adolf Hitler!

Will Valkyrie deliver a Christman gift of box office riches for Tom Cruise?

The movie opens on December 26 and the actor hopes it's his ticket back to the A-list of Hollywood.

Here are the most recent screen shots from the drama. Click on each for a larger, higher resolution image...

Though it's been through numerous delays, it looks like the upcoming Bryan Singer directed Valkyrie is getting a little push from its studio.

Yahoo recently got their hands on an exclusive new trailer of the WW2 movie starring Tom Cruise as the head of a group of German soldiers who attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler.

Check out the following trailer and let us know what you think:

Valkyrie

After a series of various release dates, Tom Cruise's Valkyrie is set to come out on December 26.

Here's a poster for the film that's based around an attempted plot to kill Hitler:

It's been a good week for Tom Cruise.

He's rumored to have signed to star in an upcoming comedy called Food Fight; he's receiving rave reviews for his cameo in Tropic Thunder; and now the release date for his next starring vehicle, Valkyrie, has been moved up.

After the political thrilled tested well with audiences, MGM Pictures and United Artists advance the release date for the Bryan Singer film.

Based on a true story, Cruise plays Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg in Valkyrie. He's a proud military man who serves Germany, while hoping to stop Hitler before he destroys Europe.

The next starring vehicle for Tom Cruise, Valkyrie, has been pushed back to next year. It's set to open on February 13, 2009.

Here's a look at Cruise in the movie's starring role, Claus von Stauffenberg, the man who leads a plot to assassinate Hitler...

It's not going straight to DVD, like the Jessica Simpson bomb Blonde Ambition, but the following news doesn't bode too well for Tom Cruise's next movie:

Valkyrie has been pushed from a release date of July 4 to October 2, 2008. There's no way to spin this. A delay is never good news for a movie.

As he portrays the role of Henning Hermann Robert Karl von Tresckow in Valkyrie, Kenneth Branagh is forced to ponder a heavy question:

What if Hitler had been assassinated before the end of WWII?

"One feels the weight of that [question]," Branagh told MTV. "The near misses, a last minute replacement of a bomb behind a wooden oak table leg that meant the course of the 20th century changed. Everything would have changed."

It's an issue that Branagh admitted to spending a lot of time thinking about ever since he joined Tom Cruise on the Bryan Singer film, which follows Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg and a tight band of resistance fighters as they attempt to kill Hitler, an assassination attempt known to history as the "July 20 Plot."

Branagh plays "the guy who recruited Tom Cruise's character. He was very publicly anti Hitler from 1936 onwards. The film has revealed to me how surprising the extent that there was resistance in the German army to Hitler."

"It's brilliantly done," Branagh said of the film. "Bryan Singer is encyclopedic on this subject. Cruise is very well cast. This tale is so extraordinarily gripping and suspenseful."

Tom Cruise currently stars in Lions for Lambs, a movie based on the Iraq war.

But the actor takes on an even more controversial topic in his next film, Valkyrie. It's based on the true story of the German officers' plot to assassinate Hitler in 1944. An eyepatch-wearing Cruise plays a Nazi German, Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg.

Here are a couple photos from the shoot: