The official teaser trailer for Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” has arrived online after debuting exclusively in movie theaters last weekend attached to screenings of Jordan Peele’s “Nope.” Universal Pictures has uploaded the brief teaser to platforms such as YouTube and Twitter, but the clip is only playing on a continuous live-stream loop for now.
“Oppenheimer” stars longtime Nolan collaborator Cillian Murphy as theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, the director of the Manhattan Project and the “father of the atomic bomb.”
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Nolan has assembled an all-star cast for “Oppenheimer.” Joining Murphy are Emily Blunt, Robert Downey Jr.,Matt Damon, Florence Pugh, Rami Malek, Benny Safdie, Josh Hartnett, Dane DeHaan, Jack Quaid, Matthew Modine, Alden Ehrenreich, David Krumholtz, Michael Angarano and Kenneth Branagh.
“The world is changing, reforming. This is your moment,” says Emily Blunt as Oppenheimer’s wife, Katherine, at the start of the teaser. A countdown appears on screen: “11 months, 24 days, 15 hours, 29 minutes.” Nolan loves a ticking-clock structure, and it appears he’s again embracing one as the film counts down toward the day “the world changes forever,” as the film’s tagline reads on the poster and in the teaser.
Robert Downey Jr’s character is heard as the title appears on screen. He says, referring to Oppenheimer, “The man who moved the earth.” Footage of fire and smoke are intercut between black-and-white shots of Murphy as Oppenheimer.
“Oppenheimer” finds Murphy in the lead role of a Nolan-directed movie for the first time after lending support to the likes of “Batman Begins,” “Inception,” “Dunkirk” and more. The actor ignored the nitty, gritty details of atomic bomb science while prepping to play Oppenheimer.
“[I prepped by doing] an awful lot of reading,” Murphy said earlier this year. “I’m interested in the man and what [inventing the atomic bomb] does to the individual. The mechanics of it, that’s not really for me — I don’t have the intellectual capability to understand them, but these contradictory characters are fascinating.”
Also joining Nolan for “Oppenheimer” is cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema, who earned acclaim for shooting the director’s “Interstellar, “Dunkirk” and “Tenet.” Hoytema is currently earning acclaim for his work on Peele’s “Nope.” “Tenet” editor Jennifer Lame and composer Ludwig Göransson are also back for Nolan’s new movie.
Notably, “Oppenheimer” marks Nolan’s first movie at Universal Pictures. The director previously called Warner Bros. his exclusive home for over a decade. Nolan partnered on every movie with Warner Bros. dating back to 2002’s “Insomnia,” including his billion-dollar grossing Batman trilogy. Nolan and Warner Bros. allegedly had a falling out over the wobbly pandemic release of “Tenet.”
“Oppenheimer” opens in theaters July 21, 2023.
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