“Oppenheimer” director Christopher Nolan, pictured right here with Cillian Murphy, joins creator Kai Bird to debate how a 700-page biography turned a three-hour, R-rated depiction of “people talking in rooms” that swept the 2024 Oscar nominations.
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When Christopher Nolan got down to adapt American Prometheus, a sprawling biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer, he acquired an early warning to not make it too wonky.
“Hollywood has struggled often with the portrayal of different forms of genius. It’s a difficult thing to get the audience into this mindset,” says Nolan. “And so I think early on, one of my sons I was talking to about the film said, ‘You’re not really going to try to explain quantum physics in this film, are you dad? Because that won’t work.’ And I said, ‘No, point well taken.’”
Nolan is joined by Kai Bird, who received a Pulitzer for his work on American Prometheus, a challenge that took him and his co-author 25 years to finish. Nolan explains why, when negotiating with Universal, he felt assured insisting that Oppenheimer needed to be a three-hour-long, R-rated depiction of “people talking in rooms,” as he places it.
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