Aren't biopics usually about people from the past? How is that unusual?

They are rarely hits people watch a lot. They tend to be a niche interest. I think that was OP point. He is not going for biopic normally, but this one has a star in it.

Oppenheimer is a tragic figure likened to the Greek myth of Prometheus and the nuclear bomb was both the culmination of hundreds of years of physics research and deployed to commit some of the most destructive war crimes in history. Oppenheimer’s story best illustrates the whiplash of the culture of fear and the mutual distrust between the American people and its government taking hold in the years following the war.

The national lab system formed to create the bomb quickly pivoted to HPC which drove funding and research to the computing industry for decades - anyone working in the tech industry, which I’d assume describes most people on this site, really should be interested in his story.