Cillian Murphy, star of the upcoming film Oppenheimer, says its director Christopher Nolan will tell the story in a unique way. Nolan, having spent his whole career telling stories in new and interesting ways from Memento to Inception to Dunkirk, will likely explore Oppenheimer’s story away from the traditional biopic structure. Oppenheimer will be Nolan’s first film since Memento to not be distributed by Warner Bros. It will instead be financed and distributed by Universal, likely due to Warner Bros. releasing Nolan’s latest film, Tenet, on HBO Max despite Nolan’s insistence that it only come out in theaters, despite the risks from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Oppenheimer will tell the story of J. Robert Oppenheimer, developer of the atom bomb that was dropped on Japan at the tail end of World War II. Along with Murphy, Oppenheimer will star Emily Blunt, Robert Downey Jr., Florence Pugh, Benny Safdie, Rami Malek, and Matt Damon. Nolan collaborators Hoyte van Hoytema, Jennifer Lame, and Ludwig Goransson will be reprising their technical roles as cinematographer, editor, and composer, respectively.
Related: Everything We Know About Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer
In an interview with Esquire, Murphy mentions how the film will be told in an unconventional manner, typical of Nolan’s structuring. Having collaborated with Nolan before, Murphy talks about how nervous he was to take on his first leading role for the director, the biggest part of his career so far. He remains quiet on how the film will differ in structure, given the highly confidential nature of the project. Read Murphy’s quote below:
“The difference with this one is the story is there, everybody knows what happened. But Chris is telling it in a different way, as with Chris you would expect. That’s all I can say.”
With Oppenheimer set to begin filming soon, the film has a tentative release date of July 21, 2023. As part of the deal with Universal, the film has a budget of $100 million, and despite being a high number, is the lowest costing film of Nolan’s career since The Prestige in 2006. The film will be shot on 65mm film and for IMAX, similar to how Tenet was shot.
Though Tenet was a beautiful, underwhelming mess, Nolan’s films are marked with intelligent storytelling and an exploration of deep themes made accessible to a wide audience. Oppenheimer will be Nolan’s first film based on real history, but Nolan’s skill as a filmmaker will take the film beyond the normal trappings of telling a story based on reality. With Nolan’s move to Universal, the director is more out of his comfort zone than ever, but with his usual collaborator in Murphy, he might find something very special with Oppenheimer.
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Key Release Dates
Oppenheimer
Release Date:2023-07-21
