What would you do with 18 minutes left before the end of the world? That question ignites "A House of Dynamite," a pulse-pounding new thriller from director Kathryn Bigelow and writer-producer Noah Oppenheim that dramatizes the unthinkable: the countdown between nuclear launch and annihilation. Told in real time, the film locks viewers inside the corridors of power as a U.S. president, military advisors, and intelligence officials face the impossible decision to retaliate or die trying. The result is an unbearably tense and disturbingly plausible experience that plays less like Hollywood fiction and more like a documentary from the edge of civilization. The film hits Netflix on October 24.
On this episode of The Discourse, host Mike DeAngelo sits down with Noah Oppenheim, who discusses crafting the film’s chilling realism, his creative partnership with Kathryn Bigelow, and how his background as a journalist and former NBC News president informed his approach to humanizing institutions we normally only see as faceless power structures.