Oppenheimer: Robert Downey Jr. & Matt Damon Join Christopher Nolan-Helmed Biopic

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Oppenheimer: Robert Downey Jr. & Matt Damon Join Christopher Nolan-Helmed Biopic

Following the recent casting of Golden Globe winner Emily Blunt, Deadline brings word that MCU vet Robert Downey Jr. and Oscar winner Matt Damon have officially signed on to join the ensemble cast of Christopher Nolan’s upcoming biographical drama film Oppenheimer for Universal Pictures.

This project reunites Damon with Nolan following 2014’s Interstellar, while this would be Downey’s first time working with the acclaimed filmmaker. Further details about their characters are still being kept under wraps.

They will be joining previously announced leading star Cillian Murphy (Peaky Blinders) as he portrays the role of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the scientist who led the invention of the atomic bomb. This marks the sixth collaboration between Murphy and Nolan, following The Dark Knight trilogy, Inception, and Dunkirk.

Oppenheimer is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning book American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and the late Martin J. Sherwin. Production is expected to begin in early 2022 and will reportedly be shot on a combination IMAX 65mm and 65mm large-format film.

“The IMAX-shot epic thriller thrusts audiences into the pulse-pounding paradox of the enigmatic man who must risk destroying the world in order to save it,” reads the logline from the outlet.

Set to debut on July 21, 2023, the film is written and directed by Nolan, with Universal Pictures expected to distribute the feature theatrically worldwide. Emma Thomas and Atlas Entertainment’s Charles Roven and Nolan will produce.

J. Robert Oppenheimer was an American theoretical physicist and professor of physics who became the wartime head of the Los Alamos Laboratory. He is among those credited with being “the father of the atomic bomb” for their role in the Manhattan Project, which was the WWII undertaking resulting in the development of the first nuclear weapons. Oppenheimer is also infamously known as saying, “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds,” quoting the Hindu scripture Bhagavad Gita following the successful detonation of the first atomic bomb on July 16, 1945.