The Hollywood studio United Artists, which is partly owned by Cruise, will not release the new film until February next year nearly eight months after it was first scheduled to appear.

For Valkyrie, Cruise wields an eye patch and a German accent to play Claus von Stauffenberg, a Nazi colonel who plotted the only known assassination attempt against Hitler.

It has postponed the release to allow Bryan Singer, its director, more time to shoot three scenes. The release was previously pushed back from June to October because Singer had not shot a battle scene that explained how Claus von Stauffenberg, Cruise’s character, lost a hand and an eye in North Africa. Following that incident, von Stauffenberg returned to Germany and hatched a conspiracy, dubbed Operation Valkyrie, to blow up Hitler with a bomb in his bunker to bring a swift end to the war.

Producers initially planned to film the battle somewhere outside the U.S., but that plan was scrapped for unspecified reasons. Instead United Artists – which is run by Cruise and partner Paula Wagner – is searching for a new locale within the US.

“We wrapped our production in Germany in October, but there was a desert sequence that needed to be prepped and the location finalized,” explains UA spokesman Dennis Rice.

“But with all the schedules and logistics we won’t be able to shoot that until the end of February. We wanted to do what’s right [in terms of marketing] and not put Bryan in a jam, so we said let’s postpone it.” Telegraph.co.uk