Universal Pictures dropped the trailer for Oppenheimer, the hotly anticipated Christopher Nolan film adaptation of Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin’s American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer.
Bird and Sherwin’s book, published in 2005 by Knopf, is a biography of Oppenheimer, the physicist often referred to as “the father of the atomic bomb” for his work leading the Los Alamos Laboratory, where the world’s first nuclear weapons were created. In a starred review, a critic for Kirkus called the book “a swiftly moving narrative full of morality tales and juicy gossip” and “one of the best scientific biographies to appear in recent years.” The book went on to win a Pulitzer Prize.
The trailer opens with a shot of a massive explosion, before revealing actor Cillian Murphy, who plays Oppenheimer, looking downbeat and pensive. “We imagine a future,” Murphy says in a voiceover, “and our imaginings horrify us. They won’t fear it until they understand it. And they won’t understand it until they’ve used it.”
The trailer continues with shots of workers in a laboratory working on the bomb, with Murphy’s voiceover continuing, “Theory will only take you so far. I don’t know if we can be trusted with such a weapon. But we have no choice. Is anyone ever going to tell the truth about what’s happening here?”
In addition to Murphy, Oppenheimer, written and directed by Nolan, also stars Robert Downey Jr., Emily Blunt, Rami Malek, Matt Damon, and Florence Pugh. It’s scheduled for release on July 21, 2023.
Michael Schaub, a journalist and regular contributor to NPR, lives near Austin, Texas.
