What is playing in this entire episode is rather amusing.
First...Cruise doesn’t make a movie for less than $20 million...so this non-action/adventure movie has issues. By the time you add up his cost, the cast, the making of the movie in Germany, and the director...you’ve got a $45 million movie (my best guess).
In the past 25 years...and you guys may correct me...but there have only been two successful WWII movies (Schlinders List and Saving Private Ryan)...the rest were marginal profit movies or losses. Since this movie isn’t about a Jew or an American...I don’t see huge US audiences going to it...so count it as a loss.
German movie audiences, traditionally, don’t go to many movies per year. Young Germans under 18....won’t go to this movie period because who cares about WWII. The older audiences...will likely decline as well.
So who would fund such a unprofitable movie? Take a guess. This movie can’t pay back the $40-odd million it takes to make.
And then the amusing thing...is that Cruise basically can’t act. Everything he does...is related to action-adventure and the story carries the entire movie.
Now if you asked if Tom Hanks had played Col Stauffenberg and would it have been successful....the answer would be yes...and he probably would have won a Oscar.
Enemy At The Gates made $66,000,000.00, although it had an $80,000,000.00 budget. But, Hollywood accounting is so rife with fraud that it’s impossible to determine if anything ever showed a profit. If the story is good, and it has potential, the film could be a money maker.
But you are correct, most modern WW2 movies have been flops. The Thin Red Line (a very lousy movie) and The Great Raid (a wonderful movie) were both box office nightmares.