Christopher Nolan’s upcoming Oppenheimer has just added some big names to its cast. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Florence Pugh (Black Widow), Rami Malek (No Time to Die) and Benny Safdie (Licorice Pizza) are set to join the film.
The trio join Cillian Murphy (Peaky Blinders), Emily Blunt (A Quiet Place Part II), Matt Damon (Stillwater) and Robert Downey Jr. (Avengers: Endgame) in the film, which will be written by Nolan and based on the autobiography American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and the late Martin J. Sherwin. It will be a biopic on Oppenheimer (Murphy) and the development of the atomic bomb in World War II. The logline from Universal reads it is 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.”
Pugh has been cast as Jean Tatlock, “a member of the Communist Party of the United States who has an off-and-on affair with Oppenheimer and was the cause of major security concerns for government officials.”
Malek is set to play a scientist who has gone unnamed so far.
Safdie will play Edward Teller, “the Hungarian physicist who is known as the father of the hydrogen bomb and a member of the Manhattan Project, the U.S. research initiative that developed the first atomic bomb.”
Meanwhile, Blunt will play Oppenheimer’s wife Kitty, Damon is Lt. Gen. Leslie Groves, the director of the Manhattan Project, and Downey is playing Lewis Strauss, an “infamous chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission who initiated hearings that questioned Oppenheimer’s loyalty to the United States and famously had the scientist’s security clearance revoked.”
Oppenheimer is currently set for release on July 21st, 2023.
Ricky Church – Follow me on Twitter for more movie news and nerd talk.
Originally published December 10, 2021. Updated February 18, 2022.
