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Josh Hartnett joins cast of Christopher Nolan’s new movie Oppenheimer

Hartnett becomes part of one of the Inception director's most impressive ensemble casts to date

Josh Hartnett in Ida Red

The cast for Oppenheimer, Christopher Nolan’s upcoming war movie, continues to expand. Now, Josh Hartnett, of Pearl Harbor and horror movie The Faculty fame, has been attached to the production.

Deadline reports the news, with no specification of who Hartnett might be playing. It could very well be someone prominent, as the Black Hawk Down actor was once a frontrunner to play Bruce Wayne before Nolan went with Christian Bale for his Batman movie trilogy. Good things come to those who wait, and Hartnett is finally having his moment in the sun with the esteemed filmmaker.

He joins a strong ensemble cast. You’ve got Cillian Murphy, Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr, Emily Blunt, Florence Pugh, and recent James Bond villain, Rami Malek. Murphy is playing the lead, J Robert Oppenheimer, the American scientist whose work on the Manhattan Project was a direct contributor to the creation of the first atomic bomb. Like many of his previous films, Nolan has written the script, based on the book American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin J Sherwin.

Hartnett has stayed busy over the years, recently appearing in Guy Ritchie’s thriller movie Wrath of Man, and drama movie Ida Red. On the small screen, he was involved in TV series Paradise Lost in 2020, and has a role in Fear Index, coming to Sky next year.

Oppenheimer has already garnered a healthy amount of interest due to all the hubbub around its announcement. The film is being produced with Universal, as opposed to Warner Bros, in a tectonic deal Nolan signed earlier this year. Unhappy with Warner Bros’s decision to make its entire 2021 release calendar available on streaming service HBO Max day-and-date, Nolan took his ball and started an open bid that Universal won out.

Oppenheimer is due to release July 21, 2023 – check out the best action movies for some thrills right this second.