Today, Universal Pictures announced that Christopher Nolan’s atomic bomb film “Oppenheimer” has officially started production with multiple locations in the U.S., such as New Mexico, California, and New Jersey. The project has an ambitious budget of $100 million and will be heading to theaters the summer of 2023.
The studio has also shared the first-look image featuring star Cillian Murphy (“Dunkirk”) as J. Robert Oppenheimer. Oppenheimer, a chain-smoking scientist (as seen in the first look below), developed the atomic bomb for the U.S. military alongside a team of experts. It was unleashed upon mainland Japan, leading to mass civilian casualties in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, forever changing Japan. The country remains the only one ever to have nuclear weapons used against them, and the event led to the end of the Pacific campaign of WWII.
Variety adds that actor/director Kenneth Branagh, who previously appeared in Nolan’s “Dunkirk” and “Tenet,” has landed a role in the high-profile drama.
Branagh joins an impressive group of actors, including Emily Blunt as biologist/botanist Katherine “Kitty” Oppenheimer, Matt Damon as Gen. Leslie Groves Jr., director of the Manhattan Project, and Robert Downey, Jr. as Lewis Strauss, a founding commissioner of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. Other cast members are Florence Pugh, Benny Safdie, Michael Angarano, Josh Hartnett, Rami Malek, Dane DeHaan, Dylan Arnold, David Krumholtz, Alden Ehrenreich, Jack Quaid, and Matthew Modine.
We’ll keep our fingers crossed that Nolan will attempt to explore the perspectives of the Japanese population, despite the lack of Asian cast members.
READ MORE: Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer/Atomic Bomb Movie Lands At Universal
The film will be the first time Nolan hasn’t worked with Warner Bros. in twenty years and could help establish a new working relationship with Universal, as the director secured a theatrical release for the WWII drama. The fallout from the studio’s push to have feature films released in theaters and stream on HBO Max simultaneously pitting the two formats against each other.
For those obsessed with the technical side of filmmaking, it will be shot with a combination of IMAX 65mm and 65mm large-format film alongside scenes in IMAX black and white analog photography.
“Oppenheimer” will be released on July 21, 2023, barring any slate hiccups at Universal.
