All about Technology: Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer movie adds another huge name to its cast

Thursday 21 October 2021

Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer movie adds another huge name to its cast

Emily Blunt has signed on to star alongside Cillian Murphy in Christopher Nolan’s upcoming World War II biopic, Oppenheimer.

As first reported by Deadline, Blunt will play the wife of Murphy’s titular J. Robert Oppenheimer, the scientist credited with being the 'father' of the atom bomb.

The movie is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, by Kai Bird and the late Martin J. Sherwin, and will be an “epic thriller that thrusts audiences into the pulse-pounding paradox of [an] enigmatic man who must risk destroying the world in order to save it,” according to Universal.

Sounds like a Bane rationale, to us.

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Oppenheimer is scheduled for release on July 21, 2023, a date often reserved for past Nolan movies.

The film will also represent the first collaboration between the Tenet director and Blunt, who recently became the only actor to have two post-pandemic projects cross the $100 million domestic box office mark – A Quiet Place Part II and Jungle Cruise raked in $160 million and $114 million, respectively, in the US alone.

It seems, then, that an already bankable director has bagged himself an equally bankable star – which should ensure the movie’s surprisingly modest $100 million budget (in Nolan terms) is repaid and then some.

Not the only first

But Blunt’s working with Nolan isn’t Oppenheimer’s only first.

The movie is also set to become the director’s first to be released under the Universal Studios banner, after Nolan ended his long-time partnership with Warner Bros. – the studio responsible for financing almost all his films since 2002’s Insomnia – earlier this year.

Although the director has never spoken publicly about the specific reasons behind his decision to part company with WarnerMedia, he was notoriously critical of its desire to see his last film, Tenet, released in theatres and on HBO Max simultaneously, even going as far as to describe the platform as “the worst streaming service” (per THR).

The move to Universal did at least end speculation that Nolan’s forthcoming project might arrive on HBO Max – his new movie has a 100-day theatrical release window, according to reports.

With Blunt, Murphy and Nolan almost certainly set to be joined by even more stars in the near future, Universal looks to have bagged itself a golden goose.