Cillian Murphy might blow up the world in new trailer for Christopher Nolan’s ‘Oppenheimer’

Universal Pictures has released a new trailer for Christopher Nolan’s highly anticipated atomic bomb thriller Oppenheimer, starring Cillian Murphy, Matt Damon, Emily Blunt and Robert Downey Jr.

Oppenheimer follows the life of theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer (Murphy), the director of the Los Alamos Laboratory during the Manhattan Project in World War II, and his contributions that led to the creation of the atomic bomb as the United States races against time, and the Nazis, to develop nuclear weaponry that will either save the world or destroy it.

In the film, Emily Blunt portrays biologist and botanist Katherine “Kitty” Oppenheimer, Oscar winner Matt Damon plays General Leslie Groves Jr., director of the Manhattan Project, and Academy Award nominee Robert Downey, Jr. plays Lewis Strauss, a founding commissioner of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. Academy Award nominee Florence Pugh plays psychiatrist Jean Tatlock, Benny Safdie plays theoretical physicist Edward Teller, Michael Angarano plays Robert Serber and Josh Hartnett plays pioneering American nuclear scientist Ernest Lawrence. Oppenheimer also stars Oscar winner Rami Malek and reunites Nolan with eight-time Oscar-nominated actor, and Oscar-winning writer and filmmaker Kenneth Branagh.

The cast also includes Dane DeHaan (Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets), Dylan Arnold (Halloween franchise), David Krumholtz (The Ballad of Buster Scruggs), Alden Ehrenreich (Solo: A Star Wars Story) and Matthew Modine (The Dark Knight Rises). The film is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning book “American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer” by Kai Bird and the late Martin J. Sherwin.

The film is produced by Emma Thomas, Atlas Entertainment’s Charles Roven and Christopher Nolan. Oppenheimer is filmed in a combination of IMAX 65mm and 65mm large-format film photography including, for the first time ever, sections in IMAX black and white analogue photography, created specifically for the film by IMAX, Kodak and FotoKem, with Nolan’s staple cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoteyma (Tenet, Dunkirk, Interstellar).

Nolan, known for his use of practical effects over CGI, went to great lengths to recreate the film’s most bombastic moment.

“I think recreating the Trinity test [the first nuclear weapon detonation, in New Mexico] without the use of computer graphics, was a huge challenge to take on,” said Nolan in the 2023 Preview issue of Total Film magazine. “Andrew Jackson – my visual effects supervisor, I got him on board early on – was looking at how we could do a lot of the visual elements of the film practically, from representing quantum dynamics and quantum physics to the Trinity test itself, to recreating, with my team, Los Alamos up on a mesa in New Mexico in extraordinary weather, a lot of which was needed for the film, in terms of the very harsh conditions out there – there were huge practical challenges.”

Universal Pictures will release Oppenheimer only in theaters on July 21, 2023.

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Erik Anderson

Erik Anderson is the founder/owner and Editor-in-Chief of AwardsWatch and has always loved all things Oscar, having watched the Academy Awards since he was in single digits; making lists, rankings and predictions throughout the show. This led him down the path to obsessing about awards. Much later, he found himself in film school and the film forums of GoldDerby, and then migrated over to the former Oscarwatch (now AwardsDaily), before breaking off to create AwardsWatch in 2013.

He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Critics Choice Association (CCA), San Francisco Bay Area Film Critics Circle (SFBAFCC) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.

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