Oppenheimer Breaks Another Box Office Record

Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer has been breaking lots of box office records since it was released back in July. The film surpassed Deadpool 2 to become the second-highest-grossing Rated R movie of all time, and it is currently the third-highest-grossing movie of 2023 after Barbie and The Super Mario Bros. Movie. When Oppenheimer first hit theaters, it surpassed Bohemian Rhapsody to have the biggest opening weekend ever for a biopic, and now it’s about to beat the Freddy Mercury film to become the highest-grossing biopic of all time. 

Oppenheimer just crossed $900 million at the worldwide box office, which means it’s closer to the $1 billion mark than anyone expected. One fun fact about Oppenheimer and Bohemian Rhapsody being the top two highest-grossing biopics is that both films feature Rami Malek. The star won an Academy Award for playing Mercury in the 2018 film, and he can currently be seen in Oppenheimer playing David Hill.  

Currently, the highest-grossing R-rated movie of all time is Joker, which earned $1,066,208,658 when it was released in 2019. Previously, it was thought Oppenheimer wouldn’t stand a chance of surpassing the DC film at the box office, and while it still has a ways to go, the biopic isn’t out of the running yet. 

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.” 

Who Stars in Oppenheimer?

Oppenheimer stars Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer, Robert Downey Jr. as Lewis Strauss, Emily Blunt as Kitty Oppenheimer, Matt Damon as Leslie Groves, Florence Pugh as Jean Tatlock, Benny Safdie as Edward Teller, Michael Angarano as Robert Serber, Josh Hartnett as Ernest Lawrence, Dylan Arnold as Frank Oppenheimer, David Krumholtz as Isidor Isaac Rabi, Matthew Modine as Vannevar Bush, Josh Peck as Kenneth Bainbridge, Devon Bostick as Seth Neddermeyer, Matthias Schweighöfer as Werner Heisenberg, Christopher Denham as Klaus Fuchs, Guy Burnet as George Eltenton, Danny Deferrari as Enrico Fermi, Emma Dumont as Jackie Oppenheimer, Gustaf Skarsgård as Hans Bethe, Trond Fausa Aurvåg as George Kistiakowsky, and Gary Oldman as Harry S. Truman.

Stay tuned for more box office updates.