Emily Blunt (A Quiet Place) is reportedly up for Christopher Nolan’s new fim, Oppenheimer, in the role of the wife of infamous scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer. Oppenheimer is of course the man who ran the secret Manhattan Project which led to the creation of the Atomic Bomb during WWII. Nolan only recently confirmed that the biopic is in the works and that his longtime collaborator Cillian Murphy would be starring. Blunt is the first co-star to be announced but is expected to be far from the last big name attached to this project, as whispers point to Nolan building a truly “all-star” collection of stars for the film.
Oppenheimer will be based on Kai Bird and the late Martin J. Sherwin’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer. Nolan will produce alongside his wife and collaborator Emma Thomas, while Universal Pictures will distribute the film.
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Emily Blunt has come through Hollywood’s COVID-19 pandemic hurdles looking like a new power-player in the industry. Her sequel film with husband John Krasinski (A Quiet Place: Part II) helped kickstart the domestic and foreign box offices, earning over $130 million at each for a total of $297.4M on an approximately $60M budget. Blunt also carried a major Disney tentpole (Jungle Cruise) into the post-pandemic market and came away with $216M, which isn’t the greatest against a $200M budget, but was still a good enough signal that Emily Blunt can draw a crowd.
Of course, Oppenheimer will be a different sort of beast, as it seems clear that Nolan will be going for more of an awards season drama rather than an action tentpole. But perhaps after snagging her own horror franchise and doing a few studio favors, prestige and awards buzz are actually the fhings that Emily BLunt has on her agenda right now. When the actress spoke this summer, she made it clear that franchises like Marvel are definitely not where her head is at, right now:
“It’s not that it’s beneath me,” Blunt said to Howard Stern. “I love Iron Man and when I got offered Black Widow. I was obsessed with Iron Man. I wanted to work with Robert Downey Jr.—it would’ve been amazing…but I don’t know if superhero movies are for me. They’re not up my alley. I don’t like them. I really don’t. It’s been exhausted. We are inundated—it’s not only all the movies, it’s the endless TV shows as well. It’s not to say that I’d never want to play one, it would just have to be something so cool and like a really cool character, and then I’d be interested.”
Chris Nolan’s Oppenheimer will be in theaters on July 21, 2023.
Source: Deadline
