New Christopher Nolan movie casts Emily Blunt alongside Cillian Murphy

Emily Blunt is the latest star to join Oppenheimer, Christopher Nolan's next movie, Deadline reports. 

The movie will focus on J. Robert Oppenheimer, played by Cillian Murphy, the man who developed the atom bomb. Blunt will play his wife, Katherine. Oppenheimer was an American theoretical physicist and head of the secret Los Alamos Laboratory during the war. He was heavily involved with the Manhattan Project, which is credited with developing the first nuclear weapons used to bomb the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. 

This will be Blunt's first time working with the director, although Murphy is a frequent collaborator of Nolan's – he's previously appeared in the Dark Knight trilogy, Inception, and Dunkirk. Blunt and Murphy recently co-starred in the horror sequel A Quiet Place Part 2, which debuted earlier this year. It's been a busy year for Blunt, as she also starred in Disney's Jungle Cruise with Dwayne Johnson – both movies made over $100 million at the US box office.

All of Nolan's recent movies (in fact, every single one of them since 2002's Insomnia) have been released with Warner Bros., but Oppenheimer will be distributed by Universal instead. The director's last movie was 2020's Tenet, starring John David Washington and Robert Pattinson, which he was adamant would get a theatrical run despite being released during the COVID-19 pandemic when many cinemas were closed. 

Oppenheimer is set to hit the big screen on July 21, 2023. In the meantime, fill out your watch list with our picks of the best movies of 2020.