Director/Writer/Producer Christopher Nolan & actors Cillian Murphy & Robert Downey Jr. discuss making OPPENHEIMER moderated by Jenelle Riley at Linwood Dunn Theater on February 8, 2024.

Oppenheimer is a 2023 epic biographical drama film written, directed and co-produced by Christopher Nolan. It stars Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer, the American theoretical physicist credited with being the "father of the atomic bomb" for his role in the Manhattan Project—the World War II undertaking that developed the first nuclear weapons. Based on the 2005 biography American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, the film chronicles the career of Oppenheimer, with the story predominantly focusing on his studies, his direction of the Manhattan Project during World War II, and his eventual fall from grace due to his 1954 security hearing. The film also stars Emily Blunt as Oppenheimer's wife "Kitty", Matt Damon as head of the Manhattan Project Leslie Groves, Robert Downey Jr. as United States Atomic Energy Commission member Lewis Strauss, and Florence Pugh as Oppenheimer's communist lover Jean Tatlock. The ensemble supporting cast includes Josh Hartnett, Casey Affleck, Rami Malek, and Kenneth Branagh.

The film was announced in September 2021 after Universal Pictures won a bidding war for Nolan's screenplay. It is Nolan's first film not distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures since Memento (2000), due to his conflicts regarding the studio's simultaneous theatrical and HBO Max release schedule.[9] Murphy was the first cast member to sign on the following month, with the rest of the cast joining between November 2021 and April 2022. Pre-production was under way by January 2022, and filming took place from February to May 2022. Oppenheimer was filmed in a combination of IMAX 65 mm and 65 mm large-format film, including, for the first time, scenes in IMAX black-and-white film photography. Like his previous works, Nolan made extensive use of practical effects, with minimal compositing work to incorporate and refine the effects. Editing was handled by Jennifer Lame, and the score was composed by Ludwig Göransson. The film was Nolan's first to receive an R-rating in the United States since Insomnia in 2002.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oppenhe...)

Oppenheimer premiered at Le Grand Rex in Paris on July 11, 2023, and was theatrically released in the United States and the United Kingdom on July 21 by Universal. Its simultaneous release with Warner Bros.'s Barbie led to the "Barbenheimer" cultural phenomenon, which encouraged audiences to see both films as a double feature. The film grossed over $959 million worldwide, becoming the third-highest-grossing film of 2023, the highest-grossing World War II-related film, the highest-grossing biographical film, and the second-highest-grossing R-rated film. It received critical acclaim for its directing and screenplay, score, visuals, and performances, with Murphy, Blunt, and Downey receiving the most praise, and was named one of the top-ten films of 2023 by the National Board of Review and the American Film Institute. It also received numerous accolades, including five wins at the 81st Golden Globe Awards, as well as a leading 13 nominations each at the 77th British Academy Film Awards and the 96th Academy Awards, including one for Best Film and Best Picture, respectively.

Plot
In 1926, 22-year-old doctoral student J. Robert Oppenheimer grapples with anxiety and homesickness while studying experimental physics under Patrick Blackett at the Cavendish Laboratory in the University of Cambridge. Upset with Blackett's attitude, Oppenheimer leaves him a poisoned apple but later retrieves it. Visiting scientist Niels Bohr advises Oppenheimer to study theoretical physics at the University of Göttingen instead.

Oppenheimer completes his PhD there and meets fellow scientist Isidor Isaac Rabi. They later meet theoretical physicist Werner Heisenberg in Switzerland. Wanting to expand quantum physics research in the United States, Oppenheimer begins teaching at the University of California, Berkeley and the California Institute of Technology. He marries Katherine "Kitty" Puening, a biologist and ex-communist, and has an intermittent affair with Jean Tatlock, a troubled communist who later commits suicide.

When nuclear fission is discovered in 1938, Oppenheimer realizes it could be weaponized. In 1942, during World War II, U.S. Army Colonel Leslie Groves recruits Oppenheimer as director of the Manhattan Project to develop an atomic bomb. Oppenheimer fears the German nuclear research program, led by Heisenberg, might yield a fission bomb for the Nazis.