WhenCillian Murphyrevealed in July thatChristopher Nolanhad shotOppenheimerin less than 60 days, the news was enormously surprising, particularly when you consider the size and scale of the film, but now the film’s production designerRuth De Jonghas disclosed that the film was actually meant to take substantially longer to film, asshe told theTeam Deakinspodcastearlier this month.
“It felt like a$100 million indie. This is not ‘Tenet,'” De Jong said. “Chris wanted to shoot all over the United States…just plane tickets alone and putting crew up all over the place is expensive. Not to mention I have to build Los Alamos, it doesn’t exist. That’s where I really felt like it was impossible. Chris said, ‘Forget the money. Let’s just design what we want.’
“So that’s what we did, and when construction first budgeted my town it was $20 million. Chris was like, ‘Yeah, no. Stop.’ We had this huge white model and I started pulling buildings out of it, not to mention we want to shoot in New York and New Jersey and Berkley and Los Angeles and New Mexico.”
A Man Who Knows What He Wants
Faced with the reality that,with the cost of the cast included, the budget simply wouldn’t extend to what Nolan wanted to do in his 85 day shoot, De Jong revealed that Nolan then did what she described as “the most incredible thing” when he told her he had to go and “do his homework”, which she soon realized meant that he would consolidate the shooting days in order to free up money for the production design department.
“Tom, the executive producer, said, ‘Ruth, you can’t go to Berkley, you can’t do this.’ But we have to go to Berkley. That is Oppenheimer! The producers were asking what I could do on my end to shrink [the budget]. Tom then comes into my office and says, ‘Chris is going to shoot this in 55 days.’ That is a lot of money we get back! At that point you feel like I have to deliver above and beyond because he just went and gave up his days. He, more than anyone, knows what he wants to get in every single day and how he wants to get it and he goes from 85 to 55 days.”
With the budget freed up enormously by Nolan’s gesture, De Jong and the rest of the production department were able to reconstruct Los Alamos, building it from scratch,without relying on VFX. The only real concession De Jong had to make was shooting scenes in New Mexico which were meant to be in Washington D.C. since Nolan wasn’t permitted to shoot in real government buildings.
Oppenheimeris set to cross the $800 million markat the worldwide box office in the coming week. The film is playing in theaters now. Catch our interview with Nolan down below.
