Christopher Nolan is one of precious few filmmakers whose name is a major box office draw, and Universal is banking on that being the case with his latest film “Oppenheimer,” a three-hour biopic about the man who led the development of the nuclear bomb and, as one person says in the film, gave humanity “the power to destroy themselves.”
A film with that subject matter would be a hard sell if any other director was attached. Since theaters reopened, films that explore serious, real-life issues have often been the domain of limited release, and even there they have struggled.