Oppenheimer Film Details
Oppenheimer is a 2023 epic biographical thriller film written and directed by Christopher Nolan. Based on the 2005 biography American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, the film chronicles the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer, a theoretical physicist who was pivotal in developing the first nuclear weapons as part of the Manhattan Project, and thereby ushering in the Atomic Age. Cillian Murphy stars as the titular character, with Emily Blunt as Oppenheimer’s wife, Katherine “Kitty” Oppenheimer, Matt Damon as General Leslie Groves, Oppenheimer’s military handler, and Robert Downey Jr. as Lewis Strauss, a senior member of the United States Atomic Energy Commission. Other members of the supporting cast include Florence Pugh, Josh Hartnett, Casey Affleck, Rami Malek, and Kenneth Branagh.
The project was announced in September 2021 after Universal Pictures won a bidding war for Nolan’s screenplay. Murphy signed on to portray Oppenheimer in October, with others in the main cast joining between November 2021 and April 2022. Pre-production was underway by January 2022, with filming taking place from February to May. Oppenheimer was filmed in a combination of IMAX 65mm and 65mm large-format film—including, for the first time, sections in IMAX black-and-white analog photography. As with his previous works, Nolan utilised extensive practical effects and minimal computer-generated imagery.
Oppenheimer premiered at Le Grand Rex in Paris on July 11, 2023, and was theatrically released in the United Kingdom and United States on July 21, 2023, by Universal Pictures. Its release alongside the fantasy comedy Barbie encouraged the “Barbenheimer” trend on social media, urging filmgoers to see them as a double feature. It is Nolan’s first film not to be distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures domestically or internationally since Memento (2000), as well as his first to receive an R rating since Insomnia (2002). The film received critical acclaim, with particular praise for Nolan’s direction, its cast performances, screenplay, cinematography and visuals.
STORY
PRODUCTION
Development
Following the publication of the 2005 biography American Prometheus written by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, director Sam Mendes had been interested in adapting the book into a film. However, the project never materialized and the authors grew pessimistic about the prospects of the book being adapted to the screen. By 2015, J. David Wargo, who owned the film rights to the book, went through various scripts with the intent of a film adaptation. Wargo later flew to Hollywood and meet James Woods, who had also set up a meeting with Charles Roven, who had previously worked as a producer on various films of Christopher Nolan. In 2019, towards the end of production on Nolan’s film Tenet (2020), star Robert Pattinson gave the director a book containing Oppenheimer’s speeches as a wrap gift. He had felt that as Tenet‘s main idea was “What if you could un-invent an awful technology? What if the toothpaste could be put back in the tube?”, making the film would have been a logical extension and had also been fascinated with the idea of exploring the historical reality of the situation rather than employing it as an analogy in a science fiction context.
In December 2020, Warner Bros. Pictures announced plans to give its 2021 films simultaneous releases in theaters and on HBO Max, citing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the film industry. Nolan, who had partnered with the studio on each one of his films starting with Insomnia (2002), was outraged with the decision as he had been a proponent of film theaters. In January 2021, media reports mentioned the possibility that Nolan’s next film could be the first not to be financed or distributed by Warner Bros. By mid-2021, the filmmaker had already left Warner Bros. and had been meeting with other studios to develop his new project. Nolan had previously supported the studio’s decision to give Wonder Woman 1984 (2020) a simultaneous release, stating that he perceived that situation to have been handled properly, but said he had been excluded from any discussions regarding the postponed release of Tenet.
In September 2021, it was announced that Nolan would write and direct a biographical film set during World War II about J. Robert Oppenheimer, creator of the atomic bomb, with Cillian Murphy in negotiations to star. The director would eventually read American Prometheus later that year, and decided to base his screenplay around the book, while also considering Oppenheimer to be the most important historical figure due to his role in the creation of the atomic bomb. Nolan approached multiple studios for the project, including Sony Pictures, Universal Pictures, Paramount Pictures, and Apple Studios due to his strained relationship with Warner Bros. According to insiders, Paramount was out of the selection early on in the wake of the replacement of CEO and Chairman Jim Gianopulos with Brian Robbins, an advocate for increased streaming service releases. Nolan had connections to Donna Langley, the chairman and chief content officer of the NBCUniversal studio group, who agreed with the filmmaker’s stance on the motion picture industry. As such, Universal agreed to finance and distribute the film, with production set to begin in the first quarter of 2022. The studio also agreed to Nolan’s stipulations, which included a production budget of $100 million, an equal marketing budget, an exclusive theatrical window ranging from 90–120 days, twenty percent of the film’s first-dollar gross, and a three-week period before and after the film’s release in which Universal could not release another new film.
CAST
- Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer
- Emily Blunt as Katherine “Kitty” Oppenheimer
- Matt Damon as Leslie Groves
- Robert Downey Jr. as Lewis Strauss
- Florence Pugh as Jean Tatlock
- Josh Hartnett as Ernest Lawrence
- Casey Affleck as Boris Pash
- Rami Malek as David Hill
- Kenneth Branagh as Niels Bohr
- Benny Safdie as Edward Teller
- Dylan Arnold as Frank Oppenheimer
- Gustaf Skarsgård as Hans Bethe
- David Krumholtz as Isidor Isaac Rabi
- Matthew Modine as Vannevar Bush
- David Dastmalchian as William L. Borden
- Tom Conti as Albert Einstein
- Michael Angarano as Robert Serber
- Jack Quaid as Richard Feynman
- Josh Peck as Kenneth Bainbridge
- Olivia Thirlby as Lilli Hornig
- Dane DeHaan as Kenneth Nichols
- Danny Deferrari as Enrico Fermi
- Alden Ehrenreich as a Senate aide
- Jefferson Hall as Haakon Chevalier
- Jason Clarke as Roger Robb
- James D’Arcy as Patrick Blackett
- Tony Goldwyn as Gordon Gray
- Devon Bostick as Seth Neddermeyer
- Alex Wolff as Luis Walter Alvarez
- Scott Grimes as Counsel
- Josh Zuckerman as Giovanni Rossi Lomanitz
- Matthias Schweighöfer as Werner Heisenberg
- Christopher Denham as Klaus Fuchs
- David Rysdahl as Donald Hornig
- Guy Burnet as George Eltenton
- Louise Lombard as Ruth Tolman
- Harrison Gilbertson as Philip Morrison
- Emma Dumont as Jackie Oppenheimer
- Trond Fausa Aurvåg as George Kistiakowsky
- Olli Haaskivi as Edward Condon
- Gary Oldman as Harry S. Truman
- John Gowans as Ward Evans
- Kurt Koehler as Thomas A. Morgan
- Macon Blair as Lloyd K. Garrison
- Harry Groener as Gale W. McGee
- Jack Cutmore-Scott as Lyall Johnson
- James Remar as Henry Stimson
- Gregory Jbara as Warren Magnuson
- Tim DeKay as John Pastore
- James Urbaniak as Kurt Gödel
RELEASE
July 21, 2023
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