Yahoo Movies Cillian Murphy could've played Oppenheimer almost a decade earlier
Oppenheimer is absolutely huge right now, wowing critics and fans with Christopher Nolan's filmmaking and Cillian Murphy's performance as the "father of the atomic bomb".
It turns out, though, that he could have played the role almost a decade earlier.
A TV series called Manhattan debuted in 2014 and followed the project that led to the creation of the devastating weapons. There was a mixture of fictional characters and real-life people, with the storyline telling its own story rather than being historically accurate.
The series did very well with critics, but could only scrape together a small viewership on the relatively unknown WGN America, and was cancelled after two seasons.
Related: Oppenheimer viewer spots historical error in Christopher Nolan movie
Patch Adams and Minority Report actor Daniel London played Oppenheimer in the series, but as husband-and-wife creative team Sam Shaw and Lila Byock told Vanity Fair, they had a lot of different people in mind.
"When we were casting Oppenheimer, we went through a whole series of different ideas," Byock (who wrote on the series) said, with Shaw (who was creator and showrunner on the show) adding: "A thousand percent, Cillian Murphy was on that list."
The duo also revealed that they considered quite a few rock stars for the role.
Shaw reminisced: "David Bowie was not available. I'm sure we talked about David Bowie, didn’t we?"
"We did talk about Beck," Byock explained. "Do you remember if we reached out to Beck?"
"I don't think we can say that we 'reached out' to Beck, but yes, it was something to think about," Shaw said.
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"We wanted Oppenheimer to feel both like he possessed a certain undeniable charisma, a presence onstage, but also that he was playing a different instrument. He needed to feel alien — or other — in some ways. He stood out."
While their show didn't last as long as they hope — they wanted to do six seasons, with a later focus on the Cold War — Shaw and Byock hope that new fans will at least discover the show following the release of Oppenheimer.
Oppenheimer is out in cinemas now.
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