Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” Reaches New Milestone
Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer has now exploded to over $700 million at the global box office. This makes Nolan’s epic biopic about J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) the fourth-biggest film in his career, with yet more time for it to climb even higher. With a current haul of $718 million, Oppenheimer has surpassed Nolan’s 2014 cosmic epic Interstellar ($715 million) and trails only his two final Batman films, The Dark Knight ($1.06 billion) and The Dark Knight Rises ($1.08 billion) and his mind-trip heist movie Inception ($837 million). Oppenheimer is the highest-grossing release in Nolan’s career, however, in more than 50 overseas markets, including Brazil, Germany, and India.
The intricate, deftly woven, and meticulously shot Oppenheimer has also been a massive draw in IMAX, boasting $146.4 million from the large format screens. (You can read our interviews with Nolan himself and cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema on how they utilized IMAX’s 70mm format to capture both the big moments and the small ones.) That makes it the fifth-highest-grossing IMAX movie of all time. The four films that brought in more on IMAX screens are also four of the most successful films of all time; James Cameron’s two Avatar films, the Russo Brothers’ Avengers: Endgame, and J.J. Abrams’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
Oppenheimer has now bested a slew of big 2023 hits—it’s raced past Fast X and swung past Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, and trails only The Super Mario Bros. Movie ($1.35 billion), Greta Gerwig’s historic Barbie ($1.279 billion), and James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 ($845 million). In North America, Nolan’s film is the highest-grossing R-rated film of 2023, besting John Wick: Chapter 4.
Joining Murphy in the stellar Oppenheimer cast are Emily Blunt, Robert Downey Jr., Matt Damon, Florence Pugh, Alden Ehrenreich, Benny Safdie, Jason Clarke, Tony Goldwyn, and more.
For more on Oppenheimer, check out these stories:
“Oppenheimer” Production Designer Ruth De Jong on Helping Christopher Nolan Build the Bomb
“Oppenheimer” IMAX Run Extended Due to Popular Demand
“Oppenheimer” Composer Ludwig Göransson Creates a New Kind of Atomic Scale
Christopher Nolan on Exploding Myths & Exposing Humanity in “Oppenheimer”
Featured image: L to R: Benny Safdie is Edward Teller and Cillian Murphy is J. Robert Oppenheimer in OPPENHEIMER, written, produced, and directed by Christopher Nolan.
