- Oppenheimer will be released on July 21, 2023.
- The film stars Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Florence Pugh, and more.
- Oppenheimer is the 12th film Christopher Nolan has directed.
Christopher Nolan fans have been waiting with bated breath for his next film, and Oppenheimer is not going to disappoint. The epic thriller is going to be a game-changing cinematic experience.
Oppenheimer has assembled an all-star ensemble cast with some familiar faces from other Nolan projects. The film will undoubtedly be one of the most talked-about movies of 2023. So, what is Oppenheimer about? Who is in Oppenheimer? HollywoodLife has rounded up all the latest news about the cast, trailer, release date, and more.
Oppenheimer Release Date
Oppenheimer will hit theaters on July 21, 2023. The movie has the same exact release date as Greta Gerwig’s Barbie starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling. Oppenheimer will be released in IMAX, 70mm, and 35 mm. Oppenheimer was shot on IMAX 65mm and 65mm large-format film photography. For the first time ever, portions of the film were shot in IMAX black and white analog photography.
While the official runtime has not been released, Matt Damon told Variety that Oppenheimer is “three hours” long. This would be Christopher Nolan’s longest-running film to date.
Matt Damon has seen #Oppenheimer: "It's fantastic. It's three hours. Cillian [Murphy] is everything you'd want him to be. He is phenomenal." https://t.co/dKkQlpmhdX pic.twitter.com/PTsfEzjLZ7
— Variety (@Variety) March 28, 2023
Oppenheimer Cast
Cillian Murphy stars as J. Robert Oppenheimer in the film. Oppenheimer is known as the “father of the atomic bomb” and was a member of the Manhattan Project that help build the bomb. Oppenheimer is Cillian’s latest collaboration with Christopher Nolan after The Dark Knight trilogy, Inception, and Dunkirk.
Despite having worked together for nearly 20 years, Cillian has never played a leading role in one of Christopher’s films until now. “I have always said publicly and privately, to Chris, that if I’m available and you want me to be in a movie, I’m there. I don’t really care about the size of the part,” he said. “But deep down, secretly, I was desperate to play a lead for him,” he told The Associated Press.
The Peaky Blinders alum noted that playing Oppenheimer is a “huge responsibility. He was complicated and contradictory and so iconic. But you know you’re with one of the great directors of all time. I felt confident going into it with Chris. He’s had a profound impact on my life, creatively and professionally. He’s offered me very interesting roles over and I’ve found all of them really challenging. And I just love being on his sets.”
The incredible ensemble cast also includes Emily Blunt as biologist and botanist Kitty Oppenheimer; Matt Damon as General Leslie Groves Jr., director of the Manhattan Project; Robert Downey Jr. as Lewis Strauss, a founding commissioner of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission; Florence Pugh as psychiatrist Jean Tatlock; Benny Safdie as theoretical physicist Edward Teller; Michael Angarano as Robert Serber; Josh Hartnett as pioneering American nuclear scientist Ernest Lawrence; Dylan Arnold as Frank Oppenheimer; David Krumholtz as Isidor Isaac Rabi; Matthew Modine as Vannevar Bush; Jack Quaid as Richard Feynman; Josh Peck as Kenneth Bainbridge; and Tom Conti as Albert Einstein. Rami Malek, Kenneth Branagh, Dane DeHaan, Alden Ehrenreich, David Dastmalchian, Alex Wolff, and Tony Goldwyn also have roles.
“Working with Christopher Nolan was quite possibly one of the most thrilling experiences in a different way, partly because he works with professionals. He is a professional,” Florence said in a BBC Radio 1 interview. “But his dedication to the craft of filmmaking and old filmmaking is just magical to watch.”
She added, “To just watch every single crew member on that set work so hard for him, to get his approval. And not like in a weird way, but like everybody knows who they’re working for and everybody’s proud of being there. Everybody has so much pride in their own work and so what that does is it means that everybody is constantly trying to be better the next day. And I’ve never seen that feeling on set before.”
RDJ underwent a major transformation to play Lewis Strauss. He looked unrecognizable with white hair while filming in April 2022. “We all know that Robert Downey Jr. is one of the great movie stars,” Christopher told Total Film. “It’s so easy to forget that he’s also one of the greatest actors of all time. Watching him lose himself in that performance, and completely lose himself in a character in this way, was just an incredible reminder of just what an amazing actor he is.”
Oppenheimer Movie Trailers
A brief Oppenheimer teaser was released in July 2022. The first official Oppenheimer trailer was released on December 2022. “We imagine a future and our imaginings horrify us. They won’t fear it until they understand it. And they won’t understand it until they’ve used it,” Oppenheimer says in the trailer.
A new 3-minute trailer was released on May 8, 2023. The opening moments feature a massive explosion. The Americans are in a race against the Nazis to build the atomic bomb. To get ahead, they have to build a secret laboratory in the middle of nowhere. Everyone will stay there until it’s done. “This is a matter of life and death,” Oppenheimer says.
There’s a brief appearance of Albert Einstein in the trailer. The trailer ends with “You are the man who gave them the power to destroy themselves, and the world is not prepared,” Kenneth Branagh’s character tells Oppenheimer.
What Is Oppenheimer About?
Oppenheimer is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin. The film was written and directed by Christopher Nolan. The movie chronicles the life of theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer and his role in developing the atomic bomb.
Christopher admitted that Oppenheimer was one of the “most challenging projects” he’s ever taken on, and this is coming from the man who directed Interstellar. “It’s a story of immense scope and scale,” the director told Total Film. “And one of the most challenging projects I’ve ever taken on in terms of the scale of it, and in terms of encountering the breadth of Oppenheimer’s story. There were big, logistical challenges, big practical challenges. But I had an extraordinary crew, and they really stepped up. It will be a while before we’re finished. But certainly, as I watch the results come in, and as I’m putting the film together, I’m thrilled with what my team has been able to achieve.”
The director revealed that recreating the Trinity test, the first nuclear weapon detonation, was a “huge challenge” to tackle “without the use of computer graphics.” He added, “Andrew Jackson – my visual effects supervisor, I got him on board early on – was looking at how we could do a lot of the visual elements of the film practically, from representing quantum dynamics and quantum physics to the Trinity test itself, to recreating, with my team, Los Alamos up on a mesa in New Mexico in extraordinary weather, a lot of which was needed for the film, in terms of the very harsh conditions out there – there were huge practical challenges.”