Who’s in the Oppenheimer cast? When Warner Bros announced it was planning on simultaneously releasing its movies in theaters and HBO Max on the same day for all of 2021, Christopher Nolan wasn’t happy. In fact, Nolan was so unimpressed that he walked away from Warners, the studio that had supported him for more than a decade.
However, he wasn’t creatively homeless for long, and a bidding war began between the biggest studios for Nolan’s next picture, Oppenheimer. It was Universal who triumphed, offering Christopher Nolan a deal so sweet it would give a dentist cavities. Basically, the man who redefined Batman for the modern era was given a blank check to make whatever movie he wanted, and he wanted to make Oppenheimer.
So, how did Oppenheimer fare at the big screen? And who helped bring Nolan’s vision of the father of the atomic bomb to life? Well, read on, because we’ve got everything you need to know about the Oppenheimer cast, reviews, plot, and more.
Who’s in the Oppenheimer cast?
Cillian Murphy plays the eponymous scientist and leads an all-star cast including Emily Blunt, Robert Downey Jr, Florence Pugh, and Matt Damon.
As for who else, it’d be easier to tell you who isn’t in Oppenheimer cast because it has such an expansive cast of Hollywood stars. Check out the main cast list below, and visit our guide to get a full breakdown of everyone who appears in the movie.
Here is the Oppenheimer cast list:
- Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer
- Emily Blunt as Katherine “Kitty” Oppenheimer
- Matt Damon as Leslie Groves
- Robert Downey Jr. as Lewis Strauss
- Florence Pugh as Jean Tatlock
- Benny Safdie as Edward Teller
- Josh Hartnett as Ernest Lawrence
- Dylan Arnold as Frank Oppenheimer
- Michael Angarano as Robert Serber
- Danny Deferrari as Enrico Fermi
- Josh Peck as Kenneth Bainbridge
- Gustaf Skarsgård as Hans Bethe
- Devon Bostick as Seth Neddermeyer
- Emma Dumont as Jackie Oppenheimer
- Gary Oldman as Harry Truman
- Christopher Denham as Klaus Fuchs
- Matthew Modine as Vannevar Bush
- David Krumholtz as Isidor Isaac Rabi
- Matthias Schweighöfer as Werner Heisenberg
Behind the camera, Nolan worked with a group of frequent collaborators. Hoyte van Hoytema, who shot Interstellar, Dunkirk and Tenet, is the film’s cinematographer, while Emma Thomas and Charles Roven produced. Ludwig Göransson, who crafted the Tenet score, also composed the score.
What are people saying about Oppenheimer?
Overall, the feedback for Oppenheimer has been vastly positive, with audiences and critics praising the spectacular visuals and impressive performances.
Our own Tom Beasley was a little harder to impress, and said that “Christopher Nolan delivers some of his most impressive sequences in Oppenheimer, but it loses its way in the weeds of Oppenheimer’s postwar turmoil,” in his Oppenheimer review.
Audiences elsewhere are pretty pleased with the result of what we got, and the movie is currently sitting at 94% on Rotten Tomatoes. On Metacritic, it’s been given a Metascore of 89. Of course, as always, we’d recommend you get yourself to the theater ASAP to see for yourself what’s to love.
What’s Oppenheimer about?
Oppenheimer is a biopic based on the J. Robert Oppenheimer autobiography, titled American Prometheus.
In case you didn’t know, Oppenheimer is often referred to as the ‘Father of the Atom Bomb’ and was a crucial player in the Manhattan Project, a multi-national experiment that designed and built the first nuclear weapons used to end WW2.
Following that story alone would be dramatic enough, but Oppenheimer’s life wasn’t all theoretical physics and weapons of mass destruction. Oppenheimer had a troubled relationship with his wife, began an affair, and was eventually the victim of McCarthyism due to his association with members of the American Communist Party. That’s a lot of life to put on celluloid!
Essentially, the three-hour movie is split into parts. The first hour could be considered a standard biopic, while the second is a tense action quest, and the third is a thrilling political drama.
Is there an Oppenheimer trailer?
The first full trailer for Oppenheimer was released on December 18, 2022, and you can watch it right here.
The above trailer offers us plenty of Cillian Murphy, which is always good, and also shows us the bomb he is building and just how much the creation of such a weapon could impact the world.
A second Oppenheimer trailer was released on May 8, 2023, which focused more on the impact building the bomb had on Oppenheimer’s personal and professional lives.
What’s the Oppenheimer release date?
Oppenheimer was released on Friday, July 21, 2023.
Due to Nolan’s deal with Universal, we knew a lot about the planned release because the man who made Inception doesn’t mess around when it comes to the art of projection. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Nolan had some exacting demands for the war movie.
They included a theatrical window of at least 100 days and three weeks before and after where Universal will not release any other films. Basically, if you want to watch a Universal film in July, you’re watching Oppenheimer.
Where can I watch Oppenheimer?
Come on now. This is a Christopher Nolan movie; you know there’s only one place to watch Oppenheimer, and that’s in cinemas.
If you can’t get enough of the best new movies of 2023, then we’ve got plenty here for you. We’ve got guides on the Oppenheimer sex scene controversy, the Oppenheimer ending explained, and a guide on how Christopher Nolan filmed the atomic bomb scene in Oppenheimer.
To stick with Oppenheimer, find out the answers to the: is Einstein in the Oppenheimer movie, and is Oppenheimer a black-and-white movie? Alternatively, if you want something a bit lighter, check out our Barbie review as well as our picks for the best movies of all time.