Though the book continued to spark interest and remained under option by various producers, its authors stopped believing a movie would ever emerge. “We were very excited and completely naive,” said Susan, describing a familiar story of Hollywood entropy: unbridled enthusiasm morphing into development snags before petering out completely. Immediately following its publication, the book seemed to be on a fast track to becoming a movie when Sam Mendes, the director then known for “ American Beauty” and “Jarhead,” optioned it. Rapturously reviewed in 2005, the book won a Pulitzer Prize, an honor the writers took as a tribute to their singular collaboration. Over the course of four years, they volleyed chapters back and forth to produce what became “American Prometheus,” a 721-page biography that is both grand in scope and granular in personal detail. The men celebrated the deal with martinis, christening the project with the same toast favored by Oppenheimer with the scientists of Los Alamos: “To the confusion of our enemies!” “The industry had a willingness to nurture people and projects in a way that’s kind of unimaginable today.”
“Part of Kai and Marty’s story is the story of something that’s been lost in the publishing,” said Susan Sherwin. Bird recalled that Sherwin gave him a “bigger chunk” of the money since the book would be Bird’s sole income. The two wrote a proposal, and Knopf agreed to a new contract in 2000 - offering them a book advance that came to $290,000 (after subtracting $35,000 paid to Sherwin in 1980). “He seduced the two of us into thinking this was a good project,” said Bird. Over the next six months, he traveled regularly from Boston to Bird’s home in Washington, D.C. Bird’s wife was adamant that he not take on another. “I told him no - that I liked him too much,” recalled Bird, whose first book had begun as a collaboration with a friend that ended acrimoniously. While Bird was intrigued by the subject, he didn’t immediately warm to the idea of working together. (When the plane was again exhibited in 2003, they co-authored an op-ed for The Times about it.) The two had met in 1980 and grew close in 1995, when both were involved in addressing a divisive Smithsonian exhibit of the Enola Gay, the plane that released Oppenheimer’s bomb over Hiroshima in August of 1945. Sherwin came up with a bold solution: He would bring in a partner on the project - specifically, his friend and fellow historian Kai Bird.
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The writing of “American Prometheus” took 25 years, and since its publication in 2005, the book had been floating through Hollywood like an atom no one could figure out how to split: always under option, never moving past development. Nolan’s epic movie builds on an epic book with an epic industry backstory. By another metric - befitting one of history’s most complex figures and a filmmaker drawn to labyrinthine narratives - the adaptation of “Oppenheimer” can be seen as a multigenerational saga nearly half a century in the making. The movie, among this summer’s most anticipated, premieres on Friday.īut that’s only half the equation. Riveted, Nolan immediately began adapting it into a screenplay. Robert Oppenheimer,” a sweeping biography by Martin Sherwin and Kai Bird of the physicist known as the father of the atomic bomb. In early 2021, the director read “ American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Among the many astonishing facets of Christopher Nolan’s “ Oppenheimer” is the speed at which the movie came together.
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