'Oppenheimer' Movie Will Tell Epic Tale of the Atom Bomb

Director Christopher Nolan has started filming for "Oppenheimer," his biopic about the scientist who led the team that created the atomic bombs dropped on Japan at the end of World War II. The film is scheduled for release on July 21, 2023.

J. Robert Oppenheimer was a professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley recruited by Brig. Gen. Leslie Groves to lead the science team on the Manhattan Project, President Franklin D. Roosevelt's crash program to develop atomic weapons.

It's no spoiler to reveal that the scientists succeeded and that the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Japan in August 1945, killing at least 100,000 Japanese civilians in a move credited with speeding the end of World War II. Oppenheimer became a national celebrity once the top-secret project was revealed.

Once Oppenheimer began to share his concerns about the future nuclear warfare, the FBI alleged that the scientist had had a pre-war interest in Communist ideology, and Oppenheimer's influence as a public figure was ruined after he appeared before congressional hearings as part of the Red Scare.

Cillian Murphy will star as Oppenheimer. Murphy has long been one of Nolan's favorite actors, appearing as The Scarecrow in all three of the director's Batman movies, Robert Fischer in "Inception" and even made a brief appearance in "Dunkirk." He's also won acclaim for his performance as Thomas Shelby in the Netflix series "Peaky Blinders."

Murphy is joined by Matt Damon ("The Martian") as Groves, Robert Downey Jr. ("Iron Man") as Atomic Energy Commission head Lewis Strauss, Emily Blunt ("A Quiet Place") as Katherine Oppenheimer, Florence Pugh ("The Black Widow") as Oppenheimer's mistress Jean Tatlock, Josh Hartnett ("Black Hawk Down") as physicist Ernest Lawrence and Benny Safdie ("Licorice Pizza") as physicist Edward Teller.

If that's not enough star power for one movie, there's a slew of actors who've accepted roles, but their characters have yet to be announced by the production. Kenneth Branagh ("Death on the Nile"), Matthew Modine ("Full Metal Jacket"), Rami Malek ("Bohemian Rhapsody"), Alden Ehrenreich ("Solo: A Star Wars Story"), David Krumholtz ("Numb3rs"), Jack Quaid ("The Boys") and Dane DeHaan ("The Amazing Spider-Man 2") have been announced as part of the cast.

Nolan is best known for his Batman trilogy starring Christian Bale and the 2017 World War I epic "Dunkirk," which landed him Oscar nominations for Best Picture and Best Director. In an era dominated by sequels and movies inspired by comic books, he had enormous box-office success with the original films "Inception" (2010) and "Interstellar" (2014).

Nolan is coming off a relative disappointment with "Tenet," his spy movie that was released in August 2020 at a time when theaters were trying to reopen but moviegoers were still staying away. After a long and extremely profitable run with Warner Bros., he left the studio once it decided to release movies in theaters and on HBO Max simultaneously during 2021.

The director, long a fervent supporter of theatrical screenings, loudly complained about a plan that was conceived as a transitional one as studios faced an uncertain public health crisis. Warner Bros. dropped the HBO Max release plan for 2022, but its most celebrated filmmaker took "Oppenheimer" to Universal and may never return.

"Oppenheimer" was written by Nolan and based on Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin's 2005 Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, "American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer." It's a tangled and complex story, one that will be difficult to tell in two hours, but Nolan is the Hollywood director most gifted at communicating complicated ideas to a general audience.

Keep Up With the Best in Military Entertainment

Whether you're looking for news and entertainment, thinking of joining the military or keeping up with military life and benefits, Military.com has you covered. Subscribe to the Military.com newsletter to have military news, updates and resources delivered straight to your inbox.