According to the Berlin newspaper Tagesspiegel, the film was irreversibly damaged after being treated with the wrong chemical during development. The accident is the latest in a long series of setbacks for the Bryan Singer-directed project, which sees Cruise controversially portray Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, the Wehrmacht colonel behind the plot to kill the F hrer in July 1944. Producers were initially denied permission from the German government to shoot at the Bendler Block, a historical site where the plotters were executed.
Then last month, 11 extras playing German soldies injured themselves when they fell out of a moving military lorry in Berlin. Much of the ill-feeling towards the project has centred on the choice of Cruise, a vocal member of the Church of Scientology, to play Von Stauffenberg. The organisation is not recognised as a religious body in Germany and many in the country were suspicious of him playing Hitler's would-be assassin.
Von Stauffenberg's family members also expressed concerns that Valkyrie, the operation's code name, after the Richard Wagner opera, would be used as a tool for Scientologist propaganda. Ironically, the images lost at the processing laboratory had been filmed in the Block, where producers had eventually been given permission to shoot after extensive talks with officials. Fortunately the crew has already secured permission to film the lost scenes again.
This article was amended on Wednesday October 10 2007. Der Tagesspiegel newspaper is based in Berlin and not Hamburg. This has been corrected.
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