Peaky Blinders star Cillian Murphy lost a stone in weight for his new role as Dr J. Robert Oppenheimer – the father of the atomic bomb.
The Cork star will look unrecognisable to audiences when he plays the theoretical physicist in the E95M biopic, Oppenheimer, which will tell the story of his contributions that lead to the creation of the atomic bomb.
Cillian joins an all-star cast in Oppenheimer as Emily Blunt, who plays Kitty Oppenheimer, has joined the cast as they film in Los Angeles, with Christopher Nolan directing.
READ MORE: Derry Girls fans stunned by Saoirse-Monica Jackson relationship announcement
Kitty was born in Germany in 1910 and immigrated to the United States in 1913. She initially studied music and biology and was married to two other men before marrying Oppenheimer in 1940.
The plot will follow Oppenheimer during his time at Harvard and Cambridge before he moves to Germany and then to California. Viewers will watch as he becomes a leader in the field of theoretical physics.
Oppenheimer was the wartime head of the Los Alamos Laboratory and is known for his role as the 'father of the atomic bomb' due to his involvement with the Manhattan Project. The Manhattan Project was the World War II research and development undertaking that developed the first nuclear weapons.
Viewers can expect to see the story of Oppenheimer unravel as he was among those who saw the first atomic bomb successfully detonated on July 16, 1945. Florence Pugh plays Oppenheimer's mistress, while Oscar winner Gary Oldman is said to be playing President Truman.
Truman met Oppenheimer after the bombs were used in 1945, killing 200,000 people, and Oppenheimer said that he felt he had blood on his hands. Truman had little use for such pangs of conscience and dismissed him as a “crybaby scientist”.
Kenneth Branagh is also in the film, and rumour has it that he plays FBI boss J. Edgar Hoover, who was suspicious of Oppie and his “Communist sympathies”.
The cast also features Robert Downey, Rami Malek, Josh Hartnett and many more. Hartnett portrays Ernest Lawrence, who's among the scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project. The pioneering American nuclear physicist won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1939 for his invention of the cyclotron, which is a particle accelerator.
Josh Peck plays American physicist Kenneth Bainbridge, the director of the Manhattan Project's Trinity nuclear test during the development of the first atomic weapons. The film is being adapted from the 2005 book American Prometheus: The Triumph And Tragedy Of J. Robert Oppenheimer, by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin.
The book, which won the Pulitzer Prize, details Oppenheimer's personal life and his time leading the Manhattan Project in the early and mid-1940s. Oppenheimer passed away in 1967 at 62 years of age from throat cancer after years of smoking cigarettes.
Oppenheimer is set to be released on July 21, 2023, by Universal Pictures.
