For his upcoming movie Oppenheimer, Christopher Nolan will collaborate with VFX house DNEG. This marks Nolan and the studio’s eighth joint venture. The makers have released a first-look poster of the film.
The Oppenheimer poster features the tagline – ‘The World Forever Changes’, a large ball of fire and smoke in the background, and the lead actor Cillian Murphy standing in front of it. The highly anticipated drama will hit theatres in July 2023 and along with Cillian Murphy, it will star Robert Downey Jr., Matt Damon, Emily Blunt, and Florence Pugh.
The production visual effects supervisor for Oppenheimer is Andrew Jackson. Jackson won the Oscar for best achievement in visual effects for Nolan’s 2021 film Tenet, and he received a nomination for his work on Mad Max: Fury Road. The in-house VFX supervisor at DNEG is Giacomo Mineo, whose filmography includes Guardians of the Galaxy and Bohemian Rhapsody.
Not much about the premise of the film is known, but Cillian Murphy will portray the character of J. Robert, who is known as the father of the atomic bomb. Robert played a significant part in the Manhattan Project, which created the first nuclear weapons, as the head of the Los Alamos Laboratory during the war in New Mexico.
Benny Safdie is slated to portray Edward Teller, who is referred to as the father of the hydrogen bomb, while Florence Pugh will play Jean Tatlock, a psychiatrist, doctor, and member of the communist party. According to the Atomic Heritage Project, Teller was a founding member of the Manhattan Project alongside Oppenheimer but later testified against him at his security hearing during the Red Scare.
The Pulitzer Prize-winning biography American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, written by Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin, served as the basis for Nolan’s story. The 721-page book, which Bird and Sherwin spent 25 years researching and writing, was published in 2006. Both writers of the book are credited as the writer of the film, whereas Nolan penned the screenplay.
The movie is produced by Nolan, Emma Thomas, and Charles Roven of Atlas Entertainment. Hoyte Van Hoytema, Nolan’s go-to cinematographer is signed as director of photography, while Ludwig Göransson is composing original music.