Cillian Murphy will star in Oppenheimer, the next project from Christopher Nolan. The movie is set to premiere on July 21, 2023.
Deadline reports Murphy will play scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer, who is known as the father of the atomic bomb. The actor is no stranger to working with Nolan, previously appearing in The Dark Knight Trilogy as Scarecrow, as well as Inception and a cameo in Dunkirk. Murphy was previously rumored to have a major role in the movie.
The movie marks Nolan's first time working with Universal. After he was publicly critical of Warner Bros.' decision to release movies on HBO Max at the same time as theaters, it seems he was ready to take his work elsewhere. The director also called HBO Max, "the worst streaming service."
Nolan is apparently targeting a $100 million budget for Oppenheimer, which he considers "smaller-scale" compared to his other films. When searching for a new partner, Nolan also reportedly demanded "total creative control, 20 percent of first-dollar gross, and a blackout period from which the studio wherein the company would not release another movie three weeks before or three weeks after his release.”
Tenet, Nolan's last film, underperformed at the box office, partially due to it releasing around the same time as a massive movie theater shutdown across the United States.
The Oppenheimer biopic will mark Nolan's return to World War 2 filmmaking, which he previously explored in 2017's Dunkirk. We called the movie 'amazing', saying, "Dunkirk doesn’t dwell on the horror of war but instead successfully conveys the sheer terror of it all through both small, human acts and deafening scenes of conflict."
Logan Plant is a freelance writer for IGN. You can find him on Twitter @LoganJPlant.