Universal Pictures has released the full trailer of Christopher Nolan’s upcoming biographical feature “Oppenheimer” at CinemaCon 2023, receiving great applause from the audience. Nolan, who called J. Robert Oppenheimer “the most important person who ever lived” on stage, revealed that the trailer will be released to the public in two weeks during the screenings of Disney’s upcoming blockbuster “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.”
“Oppenheimer,” starring Cillian Murphy as Oppenheimer, is based on Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin’s Oppenheimer biography “American Prometheus.” The movie will depict the physicist’s leadership of the Manhattan Project, the World War II initiative that resulted in the creation of two atomic bombs used against Japan. The trailer shows Oppenheimer and his team considering the ethics of their experiments, including an extended black and white sequence with Robert Downey Jr.
The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 killed over 200,000 people, and debate about the ethical and legal justification for the action still exists today. Oppenheimer himself had mixed feelings about his creation and later became an advocate for controlling nuclear power. Murphy leads a large ensemble cast, including Emily Blunt, Rami Malek, Florence Pugh, Benny Safdie, Michael Angarano, Josh Hartnett, and Kenneth Branagh.
“Oppenheimer” is Nolan’s 12th feature, and his first for Universal Pictures. It is a highly anticipated event with the studio promoting the movie as such. Shot using a combination of IMAX 65mm and 65mm film photography, with sections in IMAX black and white analog photography, “Oppenheimer” is three hours long and promises an epic scale.
Warner Bros. Pictures has distributed all of Nolan’s films since “Insomnia” in 2002. However, Nolan publicly broke from the studio after the release of “Tenet” in 2020, which was put on streaming due to the COVID-19 pandemic. “Oppenheimer” will hit theaters on July 21, the same day as Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” starring Margot Robbie, which could make for the perfect double feature.