Oppenheimer runtime to set record as longest Christopher Nolan film

The trend of lengthy movies seems set to continue in 2023, as evidenced by the 169-minute runtime for John Wick: Chapter 4. However, given the subject matter of Oppenheimer, it is not surprising that Nolan's latest film has a lengthy runtime.

The upcoming biopic centers around J. Robert Oppenheimer, the American theoretical physicist known as the "father of the atomic bomb." Oppenheimer was the director of the Los Alamos Laboratory and key to the Manhattan Project, which was responsible for developing the world's first nuclear weapons.

Oppenheimer features an ensemble cast led by Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Rami Malek, Florence Pugh, Robert Downey Jr., and Matt Damon, among others.

Nolan has described the film as "one of the most challenging projects" he's done because of its scale. The renowned director is known for his preference for practical effects and opted to use real explosives to recreate the Trinity nuclear test, forgoing the much safer CGI approach.

Oppenheimer, set to release on July 21, will mark the director's first film in over two decades that won't be distributed by Warner Bros. Discovery, as a result of an in-studio row between the two parties.