I doubt the thing needs free hype. Tom Cruise tends to star in profitable, and pretty good, films. This one certainly sounds like it will be interesting.
I think the real problem is the media eggheads who just can’t their heads around a complex concept. They have to apply a simplistic label to understand it because they’re stupid. The only people to whom the film might be controversial are neo nazis who disagree with the portrayal of Stauffenberg as a hero. To anyone else, the initial denial of the German government to allow filming in Germany because Tom Cruise is a member of a “cult” is stupid. Whatever one’s opinion of Scientology, to deny its members the ability to work in a country is to deny freedom of religion. If anything was controversial, it was the actions of the German government. But reporters and editors have to label things in order to understand them, so the film is “controversial.”
They wonder why we ignore them. It’s because the impression given by the ignorant who try to talk down to the educated is distasteful at best.
Excuse me, but the position of the German government is, that the Cult aims to earn money as the primary cause, and not to express a certain belief. Given this assumption is right (which I do believe), the German government is fully right in denying the Cult the status of a religious organization.
The son of Stauffenberg, Berthold Maria Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg does not want Tom Cruise falsifing the story of this father into a new heartbreaking and smeary Hollywood show. You can be assured that he is no neo-nazi. As a self-confessed catholic he probably rejects such so called "religions" like "Scientology" completely.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1854818/posts
Besides - The Stauffenbergs had their small chateau in Lautlingen next to the village I grew up (Pfeffingen) in southern Germany on the Swabian Alb. They gave it away to the city of Albstadt. Today it is used as a museum for old pianos. The Stauffenberg family still owns a lonesome manor-house with a farm in Lautlingen. They live there seclusive. Stauffenbergs son, Berthold Maria Graf Schenk von Stauffenberg is a retired Major General of the Bundeswehr (the German army) and a very respected person in Germany.
Although the plot on Hitler failed, his father, Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg is a (if not THE) German national hero.