Robert Downey Jr and Matt Damon are the latest names to Cillian Murphy and Emily Blunt as Christopher Nolan continues to build out his cast for his Oppenheimer project.
The Hollywood Reporter broke the story stating Damon will be playing Lt. Gen. Leslie Groves, the director of the Manhattan Project that created the atomic bomb.
Meanwhile, Downey is Lewis Strauss, the Atomic Energy Commissioner who led the hearings to question Oppenheimer’s loyalty to the US that led to the scientist’s security being revoked.
Murphy was the first to sign on because it’s not a Nolan project without the Irishman, to lead the project as the theoretical physicist who became the father of the atom bomb. Before being quickly followed by Emily Blunt, who THR is stating will play his wife, Katherine “Kitty” Oppenheimer.
This is an exciting project for Universal to be a part of as the studio will be expecting to lead award season and have called the movie 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.”
Nolan, who is directing, wrote the script based on the 2005 book American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and the late Martin J.Sherwin.
It’s great for Downey to join something of this size and being helmed by the likes of the British filmmaker as he’ll hopefully deliver a performance we haven’t seen before as his roles away from Tony Stark in the MCU have never landed.
I’m both he and Damon were dying to work with the most prominent director in Hollywood right now and given the roles, I fully hope, as well as director and film, they’ll be Oscar nominations for Murphy, Blunt and Downey.
Oppenheimer is set for a July 21, 2023 release date.
I bet Warner Bros are really kicking themselves now.
The Bear Cave 