One major director turned down Oppenheimer before Christopher Nolan took on the project

Oliver Stone previously turned down the opportunity to direct Oppenheimer.

The director is one of the most acclaimed filmmakers of all time and has won the Academy Award for Best Director on two occasions for Platoon and Born on the Fourth of July.

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Stone's movies usually cover dark subject matter such as the Vietnam War, serial killers or the assassination of JFK. And, he was interested in taking on the birth of the atomic bomb before Christopher Nolan made Oppenheimer.

"I sat through 3 hours of Oppenheimer, gripped by Chris Nolan’s narrative," Stone tweeted.

"His screenplay is layered and fascinating. Familiar with the book by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, I once turned the project down because I couldn’t find my way to its essence. Nolan has found it.

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"His direction is mind-boggling and eye-popping as he takes reams of incident and cycles it into an exciting torrent of action inside all the talk. Each actor is a surprise to me, especially Cillian Murphy, whose exaggerated eyes here feel normal playing a genius like Oppenheimer.

"Oppenheimer’ is a classic, which I never believed could be made in this climate."

Oppenheimer has received extremely positive reviews from critics and is already being tipped for Oscar glory at the next Academy Awards.

Oppenheimer is a stunning achievement

Kai Bird, the co-author of 'American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer', gave the movie a glowing review after seeing an early screening.

“I am, at the moment, stunned and emotionally recovering from having seen it,” said in a conversation with David Nirenberg at Leon Levy Center for Biography in New York.

“I think it is going to be a stunning artistic achievement, and I have hopes it will actually stimulate a national, even global conversation about the issues that Oppenheimer was desperate to speak out about — about how to live in the atomic age, how to live with the bomb and about McCarthyism — what it means to be a patriot, and what is the role for a scientist in a society drenched with technology and science, to speak out about public issues.”