Oppenheimer’s Budget Vs. Christopher Nolan’s Other Movies

Oppenheimer‘s official budget has been revealed and it’s much cheaper than standard Christopher Nolan fare.

Nolan’s latest film is finally set to hit theaters, telling the story of the father of the atomic bomb, J. Robert Oppenheimer.

The movie has already had heaps of praise upon it, becoming one of the year’s best-reviewed films. But one particular thing has become clear – this was a very expensive movie to make.

Whether it is the movie’s “rich ensemble cast” or its “awe-inspiring” scale, Oppenheimer was no small investment from Universal, but just how big the buy-in had to be has remained unclear, up to this point.

Oppenheimer’s Smaller Budget Confirmed

The budget for Oppenheimer has been officially confirmed by Universal, with the final figure coming to $100 million.

This puts Nolan’s latest feature on the lower end budget-wise in comparison to his other movies, coming nowhere near the director’s most expensive film. That honor goes to his Dark Knight trilogy-closer, The Dark Knight Rises, which cost $230 million to make.

A full list of Nolan’s films and their production budgets can be seen below:

• Following – $6,000
• Memento – $9 million
• Insomnia – $46 million
• Batman Begins – $150 million
• The Prestige – $40 million
• The Dark Knight – $185 million
• Inception – $160 million
• The Dark Knight Rises – $230 million
• Interstellar – $165 million
• Dunkirk – $150 million
• Tenet – $205 million
• Oppenheimer – $100 million

Why Was Oppenheimer So Cheap?

A $100 million price tag makes Oppenheimer the cheapest Christopher Nolan movie since The Prestige.

But how exactly did Oppenheimer, a film that is admittedly smaller in scale and premise than some of Nolan’s other works, cost so little?

This is particularly interesting when considering the film’s stacked ensemble cast. A payroll that included names like Cillian Murphy, Robert Downey Jr., Matt Damon, and Florence Pugh does not sound cheap.

Though Nolan is by no means an indie director, some actors are comfortable taking a pay cut for non-franchise work, so this may be how the movie managed to keep the budget on the lower end.

In addition, while Oppenheimer is a movie that includes a recreation of a nuclear explosion, it seemingly contains zero CGI shots (via Collider). Therefore, Nolan may have been able to save on the VFX budget this time around; many of his recent films like Tenet and Dunkirk have been heavily reliant on the use of visual effects to service the story.

Oppenheimer comes to theaters worldwide on Friday, July 21.