Official images from Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer shows first looks at Emily Blunt, and Robert Downey Jr’s characters. Based on the book American Prometheus written by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, the movie will star Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer, who is known for having created the atomic bomb during his time at the Manhattan Project. Blunt will be playing Oppenheimer’s wife, Katherine, while Downey Jr. will play Lewis Strauss, a member of the United States Atomic Energy Commission.
Now, in anticipation of the movie’s July release, TotalFilm has revealed exclusive images of Christopher Nolan’s latest project. These images give audiences the first look at Blunt and Downey Jr’s characters, while also giving audiences a better look at Murphy’s J. Robert Oppenheimer. Some images are in black-and-white, to which the film has select sequences shot that way, while others are in color, which could likely alternate between different time periods. Check out the images below:
Everything We Know About Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer
While not much is known about how Nolan will be structuring Oppenheimer, the movie will chronicle the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer, and superficially cover his contributions to the Manhattan Project, which caused the creation of the atomic bomb. Since The Dark Knight, Nolan has shot select sequences of his movies with IMAX cameras. However, Oppenheimer will be the first time any movie has shot several sequences in IMAX, with black-and-white analog film. Hoyte van Hoytema returns as cinematographer for his fourth film with Nolan since the release of Interstellar.
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever‘s Ludwig Göransson will also be scoring the film, which will mark his second contribution with Nolan after he previously worked with him on TENET. The movie will also feature Nolan alums, including Gary Oldman, Kenneth Branagh, Matthew Modine, and David Dastmalchian in undisclosed roles. Oppenheimer‘s cast is also one of the biggest ensembles of any 2023 film, featuring the likes of Florence Pugh, Benny Safdie, Matt Damon, Rami Malek, Jack Quaid, Dane DeHaan, Alden Ehrenreich, David Krumholtz, Jason Clarke, Josh Peck, Devon Bostick, Alex Wolff, Casey Affleck, Tony Goldwyn, Scott Grimes, James D’Arcy, and Army of the Dead‘s Matthias Schweighöfer among others.
Even if Oppenheimer is presented to audiences as a biopic, the teaser trailer, which premiered in front of Jordan Peele’s NOPE, sets up a race against time, alternating between the film’s “present” (in color) and “past” (in black-and-white). Time is Nolan’s recurring motif in most of his movies, and Oppenheimer may also explore that theme in a more ambitious light than a traditional biopic on J. Robert Oppenheimer’s life would. Time will tell exactly what kind of movie Nolan has in store for audiences when Oppenheimer releases exclusively in theaters on July 21, 2023.
