Oppenheimer’s Cillian Murphy Wants to Play a Ken in Barbie Sequel

“Barbenheimer” is on a tear at the box office with both Barbie and Oppenheimer setting new highs for cinemas this year. While the latter is effectively a one-shot biopic, the former could definitely set up a franchise. In fact, with how things are going at the box office so far, it’d be more surprising if Warner Bros. didn’t quickly push a sequel into development. Should Barbie 2 come to fruition, you can count on Oppenheimer star Cillian Murphy wanting to appear.

“Sure, yeah! Let’s read the script and let’s have a conversation,” Murphy told Omelete about playing a Ken in the Barbie sequel. “I can’t wait to see it. I think it’s great for cinema to get all these great movies happening this summer.” The full, original interview can be seen in the video below!

Is Barbie 2 going to happen?

As Barbie star Margot Robbie herself previously said, she initially pitched the idea of a billion-dollar franchise to Warner Bros. when first approaching the studio about the film.

“I think my pitch in the green-light meeting was the studios have prospered so much when they’re brave enough to pair a big idea with a visionary director,” Robbie said in a chat with Collider. “And then I gave a series of examples like, “dinosaurs and [Steven] Spielberg,” that and that, that and that – pretty much naming anything that’s been incredible and made a ton of money for the studios over the years. And I was like, “And now you’ve got Barbie and Greta Gerwig.” And I think I told them that it’d make a billion dollars, which maybe I was overselling, but we had a movie to make, okay?!”

“Can you imagine that first meeting?” Robbie said of Jurassic Park. “They’re like, “Dinosaurs? I don’t know, I mean, yeah? That might turn out kind of silly.” And then here we are decades later being like, “That’s the greatest movie ever.””

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.

Both Barbie and Oppenheimer are playing exclusively in theaters.