Oppenheimer runtime explained

With Oppenheimer hitting screens very soon, there’s been much speculation over the film’s runtime. Now Christopher Nolan has revealed the film’s length, on TikTok!

Would Oppenheimer be Christopher Nolan’s longest film? That’s what fans have been asking of his film, which revolves around the so-called father of the atomic bomb, J. Robert Oppenheimer.

The official synopsis calls it 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.”

You can read our review of Oppenheimer here, while below we’ve got details of the film’s epic runtime.

How long is the Oppenheimer runtime?

While appearing in a TikTok video, Christopher Nolan revealed that Oppenheimer’s runtime is “3 hours and 9 seconds.”

The brief clip can be viewed on the ‘guywithamoviecamera’ TikTok page, where Nolan also recorded a video celebrating the IMAX format.

Nolan previously told Total Film magazine that Oppenheimer is his longest film yet. “It’s slightly longer than the longest we’ve done,” he revealed. “It’s kissing three hours.”

Thus far, Interstellar holds his personal runtime record at 2 hours and 49 minutes. Giving Oppenheimer an 11-minute window to clear it without going over.

While doing interviews on the red carpet for his new movie Air, Matt Damon echoed to Variety that he’s already seen Oppenheimer, stating: “It’s three hours. It’s fantastic.”

Damon is General Leslie Groves Jr. in the movie, who was director of the Manhattan Project, while Cillian Murphy plays the title character.

“Cillian is phenomenal. He’s everything you would want him to be,” Damon said of his co-star, before adding of the runtime: “I think it’s almost three hours. It goes so fast, it’s great.”

Who is in Oppenheimer?

Oppenheimer is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning book ‘American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer’ by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin.

The movie features one of the most star-studded ensembles ever assembled. As well as Murphy and Damon, Oppenheimer stars Emily Blunt as the title character’s wife, biologist and botanist Katherine ‘Kitty’ Oppenheimer, Robert Downey, Jr. as Lewis Strauss, a founding commissioner of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, and Florence Pugh as psychiatrist Jean Tatlock.

Benny Safdie is theoretical physicist Edward Teller, and Josh Hartnett plays pioneering nuclear scientist Ernest Lawrence, while the supporting cast includes Rami Malek, Dane DeHaan, Jack Quaid, Matthew Modine, Alden Ehrenreich, David Krumholtz, Michael Angarano, and Kenneth Branagh.

The movie was filmed in a combination of IMAX 65mm and 65mm large-format film photography including – for the first time ever – sections in IMAX black and white analogue photography. Indeed Universal is pitching it as an “IMAX-shot thriller.”

This article was updated on June 5, 2023 with a new quote from Christopher Nolan.

Oppenheimer is in cinemas now, and you can find more coverage below:

| Oppenheimer review | Epic runtime revealed | R-rating explained | Best way to watch Oppenheimer | Christopher Nolan on sex scenes | Cast and characters | Filming locations | True story explained | Is Oppenheimer streaming? | Nolan ranked by Rotten Tomato scores | Is it based on a book? | Age-gap controversy explained | Robert Pattinson’s influence | How Oppenheimer died | Christopher Nolan explains strange script | Did Japan ban Oppenheimer? | Review roundup | Does Oppenheimer have a post-credits scene? | Who dies? | Box office | Ending explained |