Christo­pher Nolan’s next film will recount the birth of the atom­ic bomb

It’s said that in the moments after the first suc­cess­ful test of the atom­ic bomb, sci­en­tist Ken­neth Bain­bridge made the grim pro­nounce­ment that ​“now, we are all sons of bitch­es.” This morn­ing, that same phrase may very well sum up the gen­er­al vibe over at Warn­er Broth­ers, as Christo­pher Nolan shops around his next film.

A report run­ning on Dead­line last night revealed that fol­low­ing last year’s dust­up over WB’s deci­sion to release their 2021 slate direct­ly to HBO Max on the same day as the­aters with­out fore­warn­ing tal­ent, Nolan’s explor­ing his options. The script for his fol­low-up to Tenet, which had a rocky roll­out of its own, has drawn inter­est among the major stu­dios for its chron­i­cling of J. Robert Oppen­heimer invent­ing the A‑bomb. (He’s the guy Bain­bridge was talk­ing to.)

Being in the ear­li­est embry­on­ic stages, not much detail is known about the project at present, but the Dead­line item does men­tion that Cil­lian Mur­phy is rumored to be in con­sid­er­a­tion for the lead role. Sounds per­fect­ly plau­si­ble, see­ing as Mur­phy has appeared in five of Nolan’s film pri­or to this point – the nefar­i­ous Scare­crow in all three Bat­man pic­tures, the busi­ness­man get­ting incept­ed in Incep­tion, and a name­less sol­dier in Dunkirk.

The Dead­line item states that ​“the project has the sweep of Nolan’s last his­tor­i­cal epic Dunkirk, look­ing at WWII from the devel­op­ment of the atom­ic bombs that end­ed the war with Japan,” which wouldn’t even cov­er the most com­pelling slice of Oppenheimer’s life. He was wracked with guilt in the years after that suc­cess­ful tri­al in New Mex­i­co, and devot­ed him­self to halt­ing nuclear pro­lif­er­a­tion, a peacenik stance that land­ed him in the HUAC’s crosshairs dur­ing the red scare of the ​’50s.

In any case, Nolan’s one of the few film­mak­ers left capa­ble of wide-open­ing a movie on his name alone, and any stu­dio worth their salts will be all to hap­py to pay big mon­ey for the chance to do just that. At this point, the only safe bet is that it won’t be Netflix.