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Oppenheimer Lights Up Golden Globes With 8 Nominations

The atomic epic notches nods for Best Director and Best Feature... plus megatons more.

By Benjamin Bullard

Oppenheimer hit with megaton force at the 2023 summer box office, and now it’s making the same impact as the end-of-year awards season heats up. Fresh from a theatrical run that netted the movie a global haul of nearly $1 billion, the Christopher Nolan-directed epic about the dreadful dawning of the nuclear age has picked up eight nominations ahead of the 81st Golden Globe Awards.

Nolan notched a nod for Best Director (his third Golden Globe nomination in the same role, after Inception and Dunkirk), while the movie itself made the short list for Best Feature Drama. Oppenheimer also picked up Golden Globes nods for Best Screenplay, Best Actor in a Drama (for star Cillian Murphy’s performance as physicist Robert J. Oppenheimer), Best Supporting Actor (Robert Downey Jr. as Lewis Strauss), Best Supporting Actress (Emily Blunt as Kitty Oppenheimer), Best Original Score (Ludwig Goransson), and Best Cinematic and Box Office Achievement. 

RELATED: Oppenheimer Reviews: Christopher Nolan's "Stunning" Bomb Thriller Praised as Best Film of 2023

Oppenheimer's big impact: Equal success with critics and moviegoers

Based on the 2005 Pulitzer-winning biography American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and the late Martin J. Sherwin, Oppenheimer coursed through the complex life of the famed WWII-era theoretical physicist — the father of the atomic bomb — in a riveting three-hour story that netted more than $325 million at the domestic box office on its way to an overall global take of more than $951 million. 

RELATED: Why Robert Downey Jr. Chose Oppenheimer for His Post-MCU Debut

Debuting the same late-July weekend as lighthearted live-action comedy BarbieOppenheimer generated a sensational measure of self-generated viral buzz from audiences, as many moviegoers opted to elevate their summertime trips to theaters into a marathon “Barbenheimer” double billing — all the better to catch both movies back-to-back.

Right on time to revisit the movie at home as all the awards accolades start accumulating, Oppenheimer is now available from Universal Pictures Home Entertainment on 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray, DVD, and digital on-demand, packing in close to three hours’ worth of additional extras and bonus behind-the-scenes features for its initial disc-based release. You can secure your copy here in the format of your choice, as we await the announcement of all of this year’s Golden Globe Awards winners during the ceremony’s live broadcast slated for Jan. 7, 2024.