The first image of Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer has been released – a black-and-white photo of Cillian Murphy, who plays the movie's lead. There has also been confirmation that Solo: A Star Wars Story actor Alden Ehrenreich, Numbers' David Krumholtz, and frequent Nolan collaborator Kenneth Branaugh have joined the already star-studded cast.
Nolan's new biopic tells the story of J. Robert Oppenheimer, played by Cillian Murphy, an American theoretical physicist who historians credit as being the father of the atomic bomb. Oppenheimer's loyalty to the United States was questioned during the Red Scare, and the physicist was subsequently put on trial. Universal has described the film as 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."
The impressive ensemble stars Emily Blunt as Oppenheimer's wife Katherine, Robert Downey Jr. as Lewis Strauss, the chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission who initiated the physicist's downfall, Matt Damon as Manhattan Project director Lt. Gen. Leslie Groves, Benny Safdie as Edward Teller, father of the hydrogen bomb, and Florence Pugh as Jean Tatlock, the psychiatrist with whom Oppenheimer had an affair. Jack Quaid, Josh Harnett, Matthew Modine, and Dane DeHaan also star.
Ehrenreich is best known for starring as Millenium Falcon captain and Rebel Alliance leader Han Solo in Solo: A Star Wars Story. Krumholtz starred in the successful CBS mystery series Numbers and is frequently remembered by pop culture obsessives as the geeky love interest of Wednesday Addams in The Addams Family Values. Branaugh previously appeared in Nolan's movies Dunkirk and Tenet.
Production is set to begin this month in New Mexico. While you wait, check out our list of the 100 best movies of the decade.
