Oppenheimer Star on Filming Christopher Nolan’s 3-Hour Thriller Epic: “The Pace Was Insane”

Cillian Murphy reveals that the filming of Christopher Nolan’s three-hour thriller epic was “unbelievably quickly.” He has worked with Nolan for a total of six films, from the The Dark Knight trilogy to Inception, to Dunkirk and now Oppenheimer. Murphy takes the lead role as the titular theoretical physicist Robert Oppenheimer, “father of the atomic bomb” and the main brain behind the Manhattan Project. He appears in nearly every scene. However, according him, the filming took place in 57 days, way shorter than any previous Nolan films.

Speaking on WTF with Marc Maron podcast, the Irish actor revealed, “We made the movie unbelievably quickly. We made it in 57 days. The pace of that was insane. The sets are huge, but it feels like being on an independent movie.” “There’s just Chris and the cameraman — one camera always, unless there’s some huge, huge set piece — and the boom op and that’s it. There’s no video village, there’s no monitors, nothing. He’s a very analog filmmaker.”

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Nolan previously shot his 1-hour-and-47-minute-long World War II film, Dunkirk, under 70 days and his spy movie, Tenet, of a 2 and a half hour runtime in 96 days. However, both films are shorter than Oppenheimer, which makes it the longest film in Nolan’s career.

Oppenheimer hits theatres on July 21.