Though the plot details are tightly under wraps, the screen adaptation of the theoretical physicist's biography will take place against the backdrop of World War II. The plot will center on Oppenheimer, also known as the "father of the atomic bomb," and his contributions to the Manhattan Project as the head of the Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico. The film is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning 2005 biography "American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer" by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, which took the authors 25 years of research and writing.