Cillian Murphy Was Eyed For Oppenheimer Role Nearly A Decade Ago, But Not By Christopher Nolan
With a little help from "Barbie," "Oppenheimer" enjoyed a historic opening weekend at the box office, bringing in an impressive $82 million. Such success not only proved that Christopher Nolan is one of the all-time best box office bets, but that original ideas can still triumph despite not being based on long-standing IP. That is, unless you consider J. Robert Oppenheimer a kind of existing IP. The man who created the atomic bomb and changed our world forever was always going to command significant cultural awareness. In that sense, Nolan isn't operating entirely without the aid of audience familiarity.
Still, it's not as though the director's adaptation of Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin's biography, "American Prometheus," was ever going to have the same cultural caché as, say, Batman propelling its box office. Which just makes the success of "Oppenheimer" all the more impressive. And while much of that is down to Nolan himself enjoying significant name recognition among audiences, there's no doubt that "Oppenheimer" is a stunning work that has multiple things working in its favor.
Before he'd managed to recreate a nuclear blast without the use of CGI or visually represent the quantum realm so strikingly, Nolan had already overcome one of the biggest challenges of making his historical epic: casting the lead role. In fact, after he'd written the script, the filmmaker almost immediately called his frequent collaborator, Cillian Murphy, to offer him the part of the eponymous theoretical physicist. But in an echo of the resulting film, in which ripple effects and repeating patterns play a major metaphorical role, this wouldn't be the first time Murphy was considered to play Oppenheimer.
Manhattan
Cillian Murphy ate next to nothing for his "Oppenheimer" diet, which says something about how seriously he took his job in Nolan's film. This was his sixth collaboration with the director, following his appearances as Dr. Jonathan Crane/Scarecrow in Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy and his roles in "Inception" and "Dunkirk." But with "Oppenheimer," Murphy finally took the lead, and the actor spent a solid sixth months doing research and preparing as thoroughly as he could.
Now, imagine if he'd been given the same role but in a smaller project — say, 2014's "Manhattan." The TV series you never heard of was actually a fairly ambitious retelling of Oppenheimer's efforts in Los Alamos leading up to the famous Trinity Test, intertwining fictional events and characters with historical fact. As Vanity Fair reports, showrunner and creator Sam Shaw envisioned his show, which aired on the erstwhile WGN America, as exploring the period after the first bomb was dropped in Japan. Alas, "Manhattan," which starred Daniel London — best known as the precog caretaker from "Minority Report" — as Oppenheimer, never made it past the season 2 climax, despite a decent reception from critics and its small audience. It's now available to stream on Tubi.
One interesting fact about "Manhattan" is that Cillian Murphy could very well have starred as J. Robert Oppenheimer. As Shaw recalled, he and his wife Lila Byock were initially looking to cast a rock star in the role so as to give the physicist a certain "alien" quality. That made for a list of stars that included David Bowie and Beck. But according to Shaw, there were also several traditional actors, and among them was Nolan's future leading man. As Shaw put it: "A thousand percent, Cillian Murphy was on that list."
All for the best
As Cillian Murphy movies go, you're not going to get much better than "Oppenheimer." The Irish actor clearly took his first leading role in a Christopher Nolan film seriously, inhabiting J. Robert Oppenheimer at multiple stages of his life and somehow convincingly depicting the scientist's personal and moral evolution despite the film being shot completely out of order.
In reality, once he'd led the Manhattan Project to its conclusion and the atomic bomb had become a reality, Oppenheimer was faced with serious moral questions about his involvement in bringing about the most powerful weapon in human history and its usage in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Similarly, "Oppenheimer" intentionally leaves us with serious questions to deliberate after its unsettling ending basically suggests the human race's destruction by our own hand is all but certain. That's all brought to vivid and affecting life by Murphy's portrayal, which clearly benefited from Nolan's presence. As the actor previously told /Film's Jeremy Mathai:
"[Nolan is] just one of the greatest directors we have at the moment making films, and I have learned so much from working with him. I said to him at the beginning of this, 'Just push me, Chris. I do my best work when I'm pushed.' And he's the best director for that because he really, really, really pushes you."
Aside from Nolan pushing him, Murphy was also obviously trying hard to live up to the esteemed filmmaker's expectations, which in and of itself must have pushed the actor to give the finest performance he possibly could. Had he been cast in "Manhattan" a decade prior, that almost certainly wouldn't have been the case. In other words, I'm glad we got to see Murphy's take on the father of the atomic bomb in 2023 and not in 2014.