Christopher Nolan Regrets Not Getting to Cast Robert Pattinson in Oppenheimer: “He was busy”
One of the most anticipated films of the summer, Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, starring Cillian Murphy, will be released soon. Oppenheimer has an ensemble cast of Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr., Emily Blunt, and Florence Pugh, and is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer.
The focus of the film will be J. Robert Oppenheimer, who will be portrayed by Murphy. Oppenheimer oversaw the Manhattan Project, which resulted in the development of the atomic bomb during World War II. But despite having such a star-studded cast, Nolan was upset for not being able to add Robert Pattinson in his magnum opus.
Christopher Nolan’s desire to cast Robert Pattinson in Oppenheimer
During a recent interview with Tara Hitchcock, the filmmaker Christopher Nolan acknowledges that the idea of Oppenheimer came to him when actor Robert Pattinson gifted him a book of J. Robert Oppenheimer’s speeches after they wrapped up filming Tenet. He said,
“Yeah, Rob, off the back of Tenet, where we refer to Oppenheimer, and I had written this thing about this incredible moment that Oppenheimer and the scientists of the Manhattan Project had where they could not completely eliminate the possibility that when they triggered that first gadget, that first atomic device, they might start the chain reaction that would destroy the world.”
Nolan further described that they used that as a metaphor for Tenet and Pattinson gave him a book of his speeches from the 1950s where the great intellects are trying to deal with the massive consequences of how they have changed life forever. The director agreed that he got hooked on the story after that.
Talking about not being able to cast him in the movie, Nolan said, “He was busy. He’s very much in demand these days.”
Cillian Murphy missed out on the group activities
Actress Emily Blunt, who plays Oppenheimer’s wife Kitty, recently shared with People magazine that filming the movie felt like a summer camp to them as they were all living in the same hotel in the middle of the New Mexican desert. She said,
“We only had each other. Me and Matt were roommates and we were like, ‘Let’s go to have dinner.’ “
However, she revealed that Cillian Murphy had to miss out on the group activities because of feeling overwhelmed and the daunting task of being the lead. Blunt adds,
“The sheer volume of what he had to take on shoulders and shoulder is so monumental. Of course he didn’t want to come and have dinner with us.”
Matt Damon chimed in to say that he just couldn’t, his brain was just too full.
During his interview with Hitchcock, Murphy shared that when he got to see the final cut, he was knocked out by what he had witnessed, noting that the movie may emotionally wreck the audience. He pointed out,
“I was king of it, I was completely knocked out. I was completely, kind of emotionally winded by the whole experience. It does leave you kind of in tatters.”
Read this: “I don’t disagree”: Christopher Nolan Reacts to Filmmaker Calling Oppenheimer a “Horror Movie”
Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer has ZERO CGI shots
According to the filmmaker, who is not very fond of using CGI shots in his movies, shared with Collider’s Editor-in-Chief Steve Weintraub, that the highly awaited movie is focused on practicality and has ‘zero’ CGI shots.
It was previously reported during an interview about how the Oppenheimer team recreated the Trinity test, the first-ever test explosion of the nuclear bomb in the desert of New Mexico in 1945, entirely without CGI. Nolan said at that time,
“I mean, I’ve done a lot of explosions in a lot of films. But there is something very unique and particular about being out in a desert in the middle of the night with a big cast, and really just doing some enormous explosions and capturing that. You couldn’t help but come back to this moment when they were doing this on the ultimate scale, that in the back of their minds they knew there was this possibility that they would set fire to the atmosphere. It was pretty amazing to engage in that kind of tension.”
Oppenheimer is considered to be Christopher Nolan’s best work yet and the audience can witness the brilliance on July 21st. The run time for the movie is 3 hours 10 minutes.
Source: YouTube
