Washington (US): Hollywood stars Robert Downey Jr. and Matt Damon have joined the cast of Christopher Nolan's upcoming World War II epic 'Oppenheimer', a film about the development of the atomic bomb. According to reports, actors Cillian Murphy and Emily Blunt are already on board for the Universal project, which is a biopic of J. Robert Oppenheimer, one of the fathers of the atomic bomb.
Murphy is portraying the theoretical physicist who helped develop the atomic bomb during World War II. According to sources, Blunt is playing his wife, Katherine Kitty Oppenheimer, while Damon will play Lt. Gen. Leslie Groves, the director of the Manhattan Project, the US research initiative that developed the first atomic bomb.
Downey will play Lewis Strauss, the infamous chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission who initiated hearings that questioned Oppenheimer's loyalty to the United States and famously had the scientist's security clearance revoked.
Universal Pictures is distributing Oppenheimer, which the studio describes as an "epic thriller that thrusts audiences into the pulse-pounding paradox of the enigmatic man who must risk destroying the world in order to save it."
