After Christopher Nolan confused the world with Tenet last year, he’s gearing up for another project, which looks like it’s going to be just a little more straightforward. The directing giant is teaming up with Cillian Murphy—who has worked with Nolan before in his Batman films, Inception and Dunkirk—for a project called Oppenheimer.
This project isn’t just a big deal because we’re all excited to see another Nolan project grace the screen. This is his first movie in a long time that won’t be made with Warner Bros., but will instead be produced by Universal. The rift between Nolan and Warner Bros. started when the company announced they would be releasing all of their 2021 films simultaneously with HBO Max due to COVID-19.
Like the title suggests, the film is based on the life of theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer (played by Murphy), who helped aid the creation of the atom bomb during the the Manhattan Project. The film will be based on Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin’s Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer. Shot on IMAX 65mm and 65mm large-format film by Nolan regular cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema, the project comes described by Universal 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.”
Oppenheimer hits theaters on July 21, 2023.