Oliver Stone Reveals He Once Turned Down Oppenheimer Project, Praises Christopher Nolan

Oliver Stone takes to social media to share his thoughts on Oppenheimer.

By Jamie Jirak

Oppenheimer is now playing in theaters, and it's having a great run at the box office, which is largely thanks to the "Barbenheimer" phenomenon. The movie was helmed by Christopher Nolan, who is also known for big films such as The Dark Knight, Inception, Interstellar, and more. Oppenheimer is based on Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, which was almost adapted by another well-known director, Oliver Stone. Stone has tackled many real-life stories in his filmography, which includes JKF, Nixon, and Snowden. This week, Stone took to Twitter to praise Nolan's work on the new film. 

"Saturday, I sat through 3 hours of #Oppenheimer, gripped by Chris Nolan's narrative. His screenplay is layered & fascinating. Familiar with the book by Kai Bird & Martin J. Sherwin, I once turned the project down because I couldn't find my way to its essence. Nolan has found it," Stone tweeted. "His direction is mind-boggling & eye-popping as he takes reams of incident and cycles it into an exciting torrent of action inside all the talk. Each actor is a surprise to me, especially Cillian Murphy, whose exaggerated eyes here feel normal playing a genius like #Oppenheimer." You can check out the director's full tweet thread below:

Christopher Nolan on Re-Creating The Trinity Test in Oppenheimer:

It was previously reported that Nolan recreated a nuclear explosion without CGI, but some fans were confused by what that actually meant. The director recreated the Trinity test, which was the first detonation of a nuclear weapon back in 1945, but Nolan didn't actually set off an atomic bomb. While chatting with The Hollywood Reporter, Nolan reacted to fans thinking he took such extreme measures to get his movie made.

"It's flattering that people would think I would be capable of something as extreme as that on the one hand, but it's also a little bit scary," Nolan shared. 

"I think recreating the Trinity test without the use of computer graphics, was a huge challenge to take on," Nolan previously told Total Film. "Andrew Jackson – my visual effects supervisor, I got him on board early on – was looking at how we could do a lot of the visual elements of the film practically, from representing quantum dynamics and quantum physics to the Trinity test itself, to recreating, with my team, Los Alamos up on a mesa in New Mexico in extraordinary weather, a lot of which was needed for the film, in terms of the very harsh conditions out there – there were huge practical challenges." 

"It's a story of immense scope and scale," Nolan added. "And one of the most challenging projects I've ever taken on in terms of the scale of it, and in terms of encountering the breadth of Oppenheimer's story. There were big, logistical challenges, big practical challenges. But I had an extraordinary crew, and they really stepped up. It will be a while before we're finished. But certainly as I watch the results come in, and as I'm putting the film together, I'm thrilled with what my team has been able to achieve."

What do you think of Oliver Stone's reaction to Oppenheimer? Tell us in the comments. 

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