Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer Has Landed Vikings Star Gustaf Skårsgard
Christopher Nolan is collecting actors like Pokémon for his latest directorial effort, "Oppenheimer," a historical drama about the people who created the first atomic bomb. The cast is already absolutely stacked, but it had one fatal flaw: There weren't any Skarsgårds! The Swedish family is known for its thespians, including father Stellan ("Thor: The Dark World"), and brothers Alexander ("The Northman"), Gustaf ("Westworld"), Bill ("It"), and Valter ("Black Lake"). So it only seems right that Nolan has bagged a Skarsgård for his massive cast, and it's the second-oldest brother, Gustaf, best known for playing the mystical madman Floki on History Channel's "Vikings."
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Skarsgård will play German-American nuclear physicist Hans Bethe, who headed up the Theoretical division of the Manhattan Project and won the 1967 Nobel Prize in physics.
Could this cast get any bigger?
At this rate, "Oppenheimer" is going to have to be a five-hour-long epic in order to give every major actor cast a speaking role. Skarsgård will be joining a cast that includes Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Robert Downey, Jr., Matt Damon, Florence Pugh, Rami Malek, Benny Safdie, Josh Peck, Jason Clarke, Matthias Schweighöfer, Josh Hartnett, Kenneth Branagh, James D'Arcy, Jack Quaid, Alden Ehrenreich, Dane Dehaan, David Krumholtz, and Matthew Modine.
Murphy is set to play the titular character, the "father of the atomic bomb," and Blunt will portray his wife, Kitty. Pugh will play Jean Tatlock, who had an affair with Oppenheimer that was a security risk because of her ties to the Communist Party of the United States. Damon will play Manhattan Project director Leslie Groves, Jr., while Downey, Jr. will play Lewis Strauss, the founding commissioner of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission.
The film is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning book "American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer" by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, which tells the complicated tale behind the world's first use of nuclear energy, and how that energy was turned into a means of mass destruction. Nolan has shown that he has an appreciation for history and theoretical science with films like "Dunkirk" and "Interstellar," so "Oppenheimer" feels like a perfect fit for the director's unique talents. I'm just curious to see how he's going to fit this many big-name actors into one film and give them all a chance to shine.
"Oppenheimer" is described as "an epic thriller that thrusts audiences into the pulse-pounding paradox of the enigmatic man who must risk destroying the world in order to save it," and is set to premiere in theaters on July 21, 2023.