David Dastmalchian is having his greatest year ever, and it isn’t even close. Along with voice appearances in Batman: The Long Halloween and Marvel’s What If…?, the previously struggling theater actor was able to offer his talents to Denis Villeneuve’s big blockbuster Dune and James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad. According to The Hollywood Reporter, he’ll now get the chance to reunite with the guy who launched his career. Dastmalchian joins Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer cast, which is already stacked.
Following the casting of Alden Ehrenreich, David Krumholtz, and subsequently Kenneth Branagh, it brings to a conclusion a week of high-profile additions to the biography. Cillian Murphy, Robert Downey Jr., Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Florence Pugh, Rami Malek, Benny Safdie, Josh Hartnett, Mathew Modine, Dane DeHaan, and Jack Quaid are among the large cast members. Adapting Martin Sherwin and Kai Bird’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book American Prometheus: The Triumph of J. Robert Oppenheimer with the cast and budget of a blockbuster, the film Oppenheimer is about J. Robert Oppenheimer, one of the fathers of the atomic bomb who was exiled for being a suspected communist.
Before Nolan met Dastmalchian through a casting call for The Dark Knight in 2007, he worked in telemarketing and theater. Dastmalchian had hoped to play Thomas Schiff, one of the Joker’s minions, but he didn’t make the cut. In a few notable sequences in which he disguises himself as an honor guard and is subsequently interrogated by Harvey Dent, that role brought him to the attention of a larger public (Aaron Eckhart). From then, he worked with Villeneuve on a number of projects, including the Ant-Man movie, Blade Runner 2049, and his major parts in The Suicide Squad and Dune.
Dastmalchian will star in Boston Strangler and a 20th Century Studios version of Stephen King’s The Boogeyman. In addition, he’ll appear in the Dracula thriller The Last Voyage of the Demeter, which concluded production in October. This will be Nolan and Dastmalchian’s first cooperation since that tragic performance in The Dark Knight, albeit his role in the film has yet to be determined. Nolan will write and direct Oppenheimer, which will be produced by Emma Thomas and Charles Rovan.
On July 21, 2023, Oppenheimer will be released in cinemas. Nolan’s newest blockbuster has only recently begun production, so we’ll have to wait and see if he has any more casting surprises up his sleeve. He brings in contemporary star power with Dastmalchian while also paying homage to someone he helped breakthrough 15 years ago.
