Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer screenplay is now available to buy

❘ Published: 2023-08-02T09:32:43

Universal Pictures

Oppenheimer is one of the most extraordinary movies of 2023, and now you can buy Christopher Nolan’s superb, unorthodox screenplay.

Nolan’s filmography is an embarrassment of movie riches – you can check out our complete ranking of his work here – but Oppenheimer is his best yet; a sensory-overloading big-screen experience that won’t be forgotten for months, if not years to come.

It chronicles the creation of the atomic bomb in World War II, and its father: J. Robert Oppenheimer (played by Cillian Murphy), who headed up the Los Alamos Laboratory as part of the Manhattan Project.

As well as being directed by Nolan, he also wrote the screenplay – and now, you can re-live the film on the page with a hard copy.

How to buy Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer screenplay

You can purchase a paperback of Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer on Amazon now. It’s available from $13.89 depending on the supplier.

In an earlier interview with Empire, Nolan spoke about writing the script in the first person, something that’s considered to be highly unusual. “There’s the idea of how we get in somebody’s head and see how they were visualizing this radical reinvention of physics,” he explained.

“One of the things that cinema has struggled with historically is the representation of intelligence or genius. It very often fails to engage people.

“I actually wrote in the first-person, which I’ve never done before. I don’t know if anyone’s ever done it before. But the point of it is, with the colour sequences, which is the bulk of the film, everything is told from Oppenheimer’s point of view – you’re literally kind of looking through his eyes.”

This isn’t just a case of Murphy’s lines written in the first person – obviously, they’d need to be – but the whole thing comes from his perspective; like the character is detailing each beat of the movie from the outside looking in.

Nolan admitted it was an “odd thing to do… but it was a reminder to me of how to shoot the film. It was a reminder to everybody involved in the project, ‘Okay, this is the point of view of every scene.’

“I wanted to really go through this story with Oppenheimer; I didn’t want to sit by him and judge him. That seemed a pointless exercise. That’s more the stuff of documentary, or political theory, or history of science. This is a story that you experience with him — you don’t judge him. You are faced with these irreconcilable ethical dilemmas with him.”

Oppenheimer is in cinemas now, and you can check out our other coverage below:

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