This “Pushing the Button” preview packs a powerful impact for the $100 million IMAX-shot feature.

Universal Pictures is poised to release its latest tentpole feature film from multiple Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Christopher Nolan in one week, and to incite even more rabid interest in this large-format IMAX epic, the studio has shared a new 6-minute “Oppenheimer” featurette with fans.

This extended behind-the-scenes “making-of” peek at the entire $100 million production is a remarkable examination of the complexities of Nolan’s detailed period piece that completely recreates the 1940s village of Los Alamos, New Mexico right down to the last nail, theater marquee, and roof shingle.

“Oppenheimer” is writer/director Nolan’s most ambitious historical movie to date and centers around the life story of notorious physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, the head scientist for America’s top secret Manhattan Project, which built the world’s first atomic bomb that was detonated in the deserts of New Mexico’s Los Alamos National Laboratory on July 16, 1945 during the Trinity Test.

Promotional art for “Oppenheimer.” (Image credit: Universal Pictures)
Here’s the official description:

“‘Oppenheimer’ is an IMAX-shot 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.

“The film stars Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer and Emily Blunt as his wife, biologist and botanist Katherine ‘Kitty’ Oppenheimer. Oscar winner Matt Damon portrays General Leslie Groves Jr., director of the Manhattan Project, and Robert Downey, Jr. plays Lewis Strauss, a founding commissioner of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission.’

The treasured A-list cast also includes Academy Award nominee Florence Pugh as psychiatrist Jean Tatlock, Benny Safdie playing theoretical physicist Edward Teller, Michael Angarano as Robert Serber, Josh Hartnett portraying pioneering American nuclear scientist Ernest Lawrence, Tom Conti as Albert Einstein, and the great Kenneth Branagh as Nobel Prize-winning physicist Niels Bohr.

Promotional poster for “Oppenheimer.” (Image credit: Universal Pictures)

Nolan’s impressive resume of movies (“Memento,” “Insomnia,” “The Prestige,” “Inception,” “The Dark Knight Trilogy,” “Interstellar,” “Tenet”) has earned him a very respected place among Hollywood’s elite. His finely-crafted films have collected over $5 billion at the global box office and have been honored with an incredible 11 Oscars and 36 nominations, including a pair of Best Picture nominations.

Opening on July 21, 2023 from Universal Pictures, “Oppenheimer” is adapted from the 2005 Pulitzer Prize-winning book, “American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer” by Kai Bird and the late Martin J. Sherwin.