How Universal Pictures has sold a story of creating destruction
An all-star cast turns out for the second of this week’s major theatrical releases, Oppenheimer. Written and directed by Christopher Nolan and based on the book American Prometheus, the movie stars Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer in a story that takes the physicist through his recruitment into The Manhattan Project as he and other scientists develop and build the world’s first atomic bomb and eventually to his staunch anti-nuclear stance driven in part by his feelings of responsibility for inflicting such suffering upon the world.
Emily Blunt costars as Oppenheimer’s wife Kitty while Matt Damon plays Gen. Leslie Groves, who oversees the project for the military. Other real life scientists, military officials and politicians are played by Casey Affleck, Kenneth Branagh, Josh Hartnett, Rami Malek and a host of others.
This is the first big film from Nolan released by a studio that isn’t Warner Bros. Pictures (more on that later) so let’s see how Universal Pictures has done putting together a campaign for a filmmaker that loves telling big stories.
announcement and casting
There had been rumblings of Nolan being interested in a movie about Oppenheimer for a while but the movie was announced officially in September 2021. Accompanying that was the news the film would be distributed by Universal, which scooped up the director following his fallout with Warner Bros. leadership at the time.
That rupture came about because of Nolan’s disappointment with the distribution of Tenet, which was pushed several times because of the Covid-19 pandemic theater closures and the director’s insistence on a big screen release. When that movie disappointed at the box office and was sent to HBO Max just a few weeks later it marked the end of a working relationship that spanned almost two decades.
Because of how industry politics is rich fodder for the trade press there were multiple stories about how exactly that happened.
Murphy was cast in the lead role in October of that year, with Blunt added later in the month. Pugh, Damon, Downey Jr. and others joined later in the year. Hartnett,
A first look at Murphy as Oppenheimer was released in February 2022, as new cast members were announced at a rate of what seemed like a dozen a week.
Universal chair Donna Langley commented some more about how she finally landed Nolan in a keynote speech at SXSW 2022.
In June Universal presented the movie to attendees of CineEurope.
the marketing campaign
A year out from release the marketing effort kicked off with the release of a poster that also confirmed the eventual in-theater date. That poster is pretty simple but effective, showing the silhouette of a man (presumably Oppenheimer) standing amid the billowing clouds of a nuclear explosion. Nolan’s name is prominently displayed at the top of the one-sheet, an indication of what Universal feels will be a big factor in attracting audiences.
At the same time there was a teaser released but it was *only* attached to Nope in theaters and not shared with the general public online.
In December an Total Film cover story about the movie included lots of new first look photos along with interviews with the cast and crew. Most notably, Nolan revealed the atomic explosions seen in the movie are practical effects, not digital creations.
Another poster released days later shows Oppenheimer looking out a bunker porthole at the blinding explosion.
The first trailer (43.8m YouTube plays) – seemingly not the same one shown before Nope – intertwines scenes of scientists working on the bomb, images of the universe that seem pulled from a “Nova” special and shots of Oppenheimer looking very concerned, all while the main character’s narration talks about the uncertainty of what they’re doing both from a scientific and ethical perspective.
The first few months of 2023 saw largely filler material in the campaign including brief mentions as part of a profile of costar Alden Ehrenreich that was part of his Cocaine Bear publicity cycle, Nolan showing footage from the movie to attendees of CinemaCon in April and an interview with Murphy about how he pushed to finally be something more than Nolan’s go-to supporting talent.
Things got going again in May when a new poster was released, this one showing Oppenheimer standing in front of the massive and deadly device he helped create.
The trailer (47.1m YouTube plays) that came out at the same time takes a slightly more linear approach to laying the story out but hits many of the same beats as the first one, with Oppenheimer and Graves trying to push the project forward while many of those involved question the morality of the project as well as what might be next.
Another interview with Murphy had him talking more about finally graduating to lead actor for Nolan as well as how much he loved the script when he read it. There were also interviews with Murphy, Nolan and others in Entertainment Weekly, Total Film, Empire and elsewhere that touched on additional details like the movie’s three-hour running time and more.
The first featurette came out in early June and, appropriately enough, focuses on how Nolan used IMAX cameras to achieve the kind of massive scale Nolan was going for, including how the company developed brand new black-and-white film stock for him.
Of course IMAX released an exclusive poster that used the same dark orange and black color palette to show Oppenheimer scaling the massive tower where the first atomic device was setup for the Trinity Test. There were also posters from Dolby,
Profiles of Damon, Blunt and Nolan where they all talked about working together and how the story is not only world-shaking but also intimate and personal in nature. Nolan’s interview also had him opining on how the current debate around AI is (or at least should be) similar to that around atomic weapons given both have the ability to wreak massive destruction, albeit in different ways. Damon, Blunt and Murphy were joined by Robert Downey Jr., who plays a senator with a vendetta against Oppenheimer; and Florence Pugh, who plays a woman Oppenheimer had a long-running affair with for a group interview for People.
Many of those same people take part in the next featurette, which focuses on the stakes and characters of the story and how it’s been told with IMAX cameras and using practical effects and locations as much as possible. Another focuses more specifically on the cast and how they were all assembled for the project.
Paris marked the first stop for the cast and Nolan as they marked the world premiere there.
They then went to London, where the screening included the cast walking out *during* the event as it was happening at the same moment SAG-AFTRA called for a union strike, meaning they were prohibited from further promotion or appearances. That strike also meant that while the U.S. premiere in Los Angeles was still scheduled those cast members would not be in attendance.
An “Opening Look” video plays half like a trailer and half like a compilation of clips offering glimpses of various parts of the movie’s story all leading into one another to form a loose narrative for the audience to follow.
More featurettes continued to come out, including one that focused on the nature of the Trinity Test and how it was filmed, one about the score and one from Kodak about the cameras used to shoot the movie.
There were a few more interviews with the cast that came out in the last two weeks before release, all of which were conducted or filmed before the SAG-AFTRA strike.
overall
What this is selling is a Very Serious Motion Picture, one made by Very Serious People about a Very Serious Subject.
That’s all well and good, but I have to believe it’s Nolan’s name as well as the attention that’s come from the “Barbieheimer” narrative around two major releases hitting theaters in a single weekend that’s contributing to the $50m opening weekend tracking predicts more than the campaign itself.
Not that there’s anything wrong with the push Universal Pictures has executed – it’s quite good on a number of levels – it’s just that given the extremely fickle nature of audiences in the last several months it’s hard to assume that many people have been pulled in with consistent messages about film stock production.
picking up the spare
Nolan was interviewed in a number of outlets about how the movie and its story does or doesn’t reflect the real power inventors and tech leaders have toward society.
Cinematic Slant 