Death and destruction never looked so good: Christopher Nolan has shared a first look at Cillian Murphy as the father of the atomic bomb in the upcoming movie Oppenheimer. The hotly-anticipated film has also added Kenneth Branagh to an already stacked cast.
Nolan’s follow-up to 2020’s Tenet follows J. Robert Oppenheimer both before and after he helped develop humanity’s most terrifying weapon. The first look finds Murphy staring down the camera, mouth holding one of the cigarettes that would eventually kill him, and eyes as haunted as they might have been after the first successful detonation of an atomic bomb, when Oppenheimer said, “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”
Emily Blunt stars as his wife Kitty Oppenheimer, and Nolan has also recruited Robert Downey Jr., Matt Damon, Florence Pugh, Rami Malek, and Benny Safdie, among others. Principal photography has begun, but no release date is set.
Branagh is playing a currently-unspecified role, and this isn’t his first Nolan rodeo; he previously teamed up with the blockbuster filmmaker on Dunkirk and Tenet. It’s just more good news for Branagh, who was recently nominated for three Academy Awards for his semi-autobiographical film Belfast, including Best Picture. With that, he broke an Oscar record with nominations in seven different categories across his long career.
