The first teaser for Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer will debut exclusively in theaters.
The upcoming biopic stars Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer, the theoretical physicist who is often credited as the “father of the atomic bomb”.
The brief teaser will be attached to Jordan Peele’s new sci-fi horror flick, Nope – a move that makes more sense when you consider that both are distributed by Universal Pictures.
Nolan’s last film, Tenet, also pushed its first teaser trailer as a theatrical exclusive, attached to the Fast & Furious spin-off film, Hobbs and Shaw. Tenet’s first trailer was subsequently never released online. It’s thought that Oppenheimer will follow this pattern.
“The world is changing, reforming,” says Emily Blunt as Oppenheimer’s wife, Katherine, according to Variety. “This is your moment.” A countdown timer then begins: “11 months, 24 days, 15 hours, 29 minutes.”
It’s presumably a countdown to the day “the world changes forever” – the launch of the first-ever nuclear weapon by the United States at 5:29 am on July 16, 1945. Code name Trinity, this test was of an implosion-design nuclear device, nicknamed “The Gadget”… the same design as the Fat Man that was eventually detonated over Nagasaki on August 9, 1945.
As the film’s title appears on screen, Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.) can be heard saying: “The man who moved the Earth” which is presumably a reference to Oppenheimer himself. Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) is then seen on screen, briefly, as footage of fire and smoke are intercut between black and white footage of the man himself.
It certainly sounds like a suitably haunting tease… and we can’t wait to see it on the big screen.
Whether or not it will eventually get an online release remains to be seen.
Oppenheimer stars Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer alongside an all-star ensemble cast including Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr., Florence Pugh, Rami Malek, Benny Safdie, Josh Hartnett, Dane DeHaan, Matthew Modine, David Dastmalchian, and Jack Quaid.
Christopher Nolan both wrote and directed the film based on the book American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin.
Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.