It’s official: after being rumored to star in Christopher Nolan’s Robert Oppenheimer and the creation of the atom bomb movie, actor Cillian Murphy is now confirmed to be playing the lead character. What’s more, the film, which Universal won in a big bidding war last month, now that Nolan and Warner Bros. have parted ways, has a release date of July 21, 2023 (reports surfaced earlier that a 2023 or 2024 release was being debated, but I guess they decided.
Oppenheimer was a theoretical physicist who became the director of the Los Alamos Laboratory. He led the research and development of the atom bomb that ended WWII in 1945 under the covert codename, the Manhattan Project. Nolan will produce the film alongside his wife and longtime producing partner Emma Thomas for their Syncopy Inc. banner. Murphy, who has starred in Nolan’s ‘The Dark Knight’ films, “Inception” and “Dunkirk” will play the titular scientist.
READ MORE: Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer/Atomic Bomb Movie Lands At Universal
Many studios had been vying for the film, including Sony Pictures and AppleTV+. Still, none of them could agree to Nolan’s strenuous demands, one of them being that the movie had to have a 100-day theatrical window (at least) before it could hit streaming, VOD, DVD, or any ancillary market of any kind.
Nolan had made his home at Warner Bros. since pretty much the beginning of his career. Still, he fell out with the studio over the difficult-pandemic release of “Tenet” ( which made $363.7 million worldwide) and then their day-and-date decision to release all of their films simultaneously with theaters on HBO Max. Nolan’s films weren’t affected by this decision, “Tenet” was already out, but he didn’t like the way Warners handled it (announced in the press before creative partners like himself were notified), and the message it sent out his all-important theatrical experience.
Universal is describing “Oppenheimer” as an “epic thriller that thrusts audiences into the pulse-pounding paradox of the enigmatic man who must risk destroying the world in order to save it.” Sounds like a Christopher Nolan movie, alright. Production will begin in early 2022 and shoot on IMAX 65mm, and 65mm large-format film and creative Nolan notables like cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema (“Tenet,” “Dunkirk” and “Interstellar”), editor Jennifer Lame (“Tenet”), and composer Ludwig Göransson (“Tenet”) are also back on board.