Christopher Nolan’s next World War II film tentatively titled Oppenheimer has now added Matt Damon and Robert Downey Jr. The film being made by Universal Studios will be about American theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer and the atomic bomb, who will be portrayed by Cillian Murphy, with leading Hollywood actress and A Quiet Place fame Emily Blunt already on board the project, which reportedly has an estimated budget of $100 million. Billed to be an "epic thriller that thrusts audiences into the pulse-pounding paradox of the enigmatic man who must risk destroying the world in order to save it", Oppenheimer will be coming out in theatres on July 21, 2023.
One of the biggest and most lucrative projects in recent times, Oppenheimer will reportedly see Murphy in the role of the renowned physicist who develops the atomic bomb during World War II, with reports stating Blunt is set to play his wife, Katherine "Kitty" Oppenheimer. It is being stated that Damon has been cast as Lt. Gen. Leslie Groves, the director of the Manhattan Project, while Downey will play Lewis Strauss, the chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission. While Groves spearheaded the research enterprise behind the development of the first atom bomb, Strauss initiated the Oppenheimer security hearings that questioned the scientist's loyalty to the United States, which led to his security clearance getting revoked.
Based on American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and the late Martin J. Sherwin, Oppenheimer will have a script written by Christopher Nolan, while his creative partner and wife, Emma Thomas, is producing the film along with Charles Roven of Atlas Entertainment. The book was published in 2005 and won the Pulitzer Prize.