The IMAX Camera Used to Film ‘Oppenheimer’ Broke During a Sex Scene

With Oscar season well and truly upon us, actress Florence Pugh has revealed that during the filming of smash hit movie Oppenheimer the camera broke at a very unfortunate moment.

Oppenheimer, directed by Christopher Nolan, was shot on a 65mm large format film camera including IMAX 65mm which means skilled, specialist engineers are on hand to make sure the cameras are running soundly.

But with cameras, especially film cameras, things go wrong and unfortunately, it happened during a sex scene between stars of the movie Cillian Murphy and Florence Pugh. Murphy plays the film’s title character J. Robert Oppenheimer while Pugh plays his communist lover Jean Tatlock.

Speaking on a recent panel for the movie, Pugh says, “In the middle of our sex scene, the camera broke. We were both naked, it was not ideal timing.”

florence pugh talking about how the camera broke in the middle of her sex scene with cillian murphy 😭 pic.twitter.com/rMoI1T5qnw

— sophia (@hellopugh) January 26, 2024

Pugh, who is sitting next to Murphy, explains that there were not many cameras as one was in the shop being fixed leaving no other option but to fix the one they had.

“We had to figure out how to fix this camera so Cillian and I are in this room together and it’s a closed set and we’re both holding our bodies and this camera surgeon comes into the room and starts doing like [impersonates a drilling tool] on this camera,” she says.

“And I’m like, this is my moment to learn, ‘So, tell me what’s wrong with this camera.’ You make your moments.”

Pugh says that Nolan had some input with fixing the camera and adds that everyone on the set was “so knowledgable.”

Nolan Has Destroyed Three IMAX Cameras During His Career

In a Screen Rant article from last March, it was revealed that Nolan has broken IMAX cameras — which cost $500,000 — on three occasions.

During 2008’s The Dark Knight, a truck toppled over for a stunt crushing one of the four IMAX cameras that existed in the entire world at that point.

Then in 2012’s sequel, The Dark Knight Rises, a batpod smashed into one of the cameras ridden by Anne Hathaway’s stuntperson.

And in Nolan’s Dunkirk war epic, he strapped an IMAX camera to a plane that was scheduled to crash and it sunk to the bottom of the ocean. However, they did retrieve the camera and the footage.