Why Oppenheimer Will Be One of the Box Office Bombs This Summer

Fans of Christopher Nolan can rejoice. His next film, announced for July 19, 2023, is very promising. While the director has left Warner Bros. to join Universal in September 2021,  the trailer for his new feature film, Oppenheimer, hints at a major project. Announced as a grandiose biopic with a budget of one hundred million dollars and forbidden to those under 17 years old, the film tells the life of scientist Julius Robert Oppenheimer, nicknamed the “father of the atomic bomb”. An American theoretical physicist and professor of physics born in 1904,  he became the head of the Los Alamos Laboratory during World War II and played a leading role in the Manhattan Project,  which led to the very first atomic bomb. A feat that quickly descends into disarray, the scientist confiding, after the detonation of the first bomb: “Now I have become death, the destroyer of worlds.”

Oppenheimer’s star-studded cast, from Cillian Murphy to Florence Pugh

To play this enigmatic character, Christopher Nolan chose the 46-year-old Irish actor Cillian Murphy, star of the series
 
Peaky Blinders
 who is one of the filmmaker’s favorite actors. The director has already worked with him several times, notably on his films Batman Begins (2005), Inception  (2010) and Dunkirk (2017). At his side, the cast of Oppenheimer is just as prestigious : Emily Blunt (Mary Poppins Returns, Without a sound) in the role of his wife,
Florence Pugh
(Midsommar, The Daughters of Dr. March) in that of the physicist Jean Tatlock or Matt Damon (Jason Bourne, The Martian), chosen to play the project leader, Ricard Groves and Robert Downey Jr. (Iron Man, Sherlock Holmes) to play the American politician Lewis Strauss. And the supporting roles are also played by big names in the industry, from Rami Malek (Oscar winner for his role in Bohemian Rhapsody) to Casey Affleck (Ocean’s Eleven, Interstellar) or Kenneth Branagh (Death on the Nile, Murder on the Orient Express)…

Oppenheimer: a film with breathtaking images

Adapted from biography American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (2005), written by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin,  promises to be rich in breathtaking images, including black and white scenes shot in IMAX (a first). Christopher Nolan did not skimp on the means. In addition to the impressive visual effects to illustrate the depictions of molten atoms, the director’s team went so far as to recreate the Trinity test, the first test of the nuclear weapon designed by the physicist and carried out on July 16, 1945, by reproducing explosions on a mesa (a plateau formed on the remains of a volcanic flow) in New Mexico during filming. From the acting to the images, Christopher Nolan’s next feature film promises to be impressive.

Oppenheimer (2023) by Christopher Nolan, in theaters on July 19, 2023.