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It’s Oscar season, huzzah! The Golden Globes and Critics Choice Awards are in the books, several of the major guilds—including the Screen Actors, Directors, and Producers—released their nominations last week, and the BAFTA (British Academy) nominations came out yesterday. That means we have some tangible idea of what every awards body thinks about the past year’s crop of films except for the Oscars. So with the Oscar nominations finally arriving next Tuesday, it’s the perfect time to take stock of what we know, what we think we know, and what we still have no idea about.
But we never really have no idea, right? No no, we have so many ideas.
The contenders for the eight major categories are each listed below in order of how likely I think they are to get nominated, and those listed above the line for each category are my official predictions.
BEST PICTURE
“Oppenheimer”
“Barbie”
“Killers of the Flower Moon”
“Poor Things”
“The Holdovers”
“Maestro”
“American Fiction”
“Anatomy of a Fall”
“Past Lives”
“The Color Purple”
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“The Zone of Interest”
“Saltburn”
“May December”
“All of Us Strangers”
“Air”
“Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse”
“Society of the Snow”
If this were the old days with five Best Picture nominees, this would be an easy category to predict. “Oppenheimer,” “Barbie,” “Killers of the Flower Moon,” “Poor Things,” and “The Holdovers” are all virtual locks. And even if it were the more-recently-old-days, when there could be anywhere between 5-10 nominees depending on the vote breakdown, I wouldn’t hesitate to predict this as a 9-nominee year, as “Maestro,” “American Fiction,” “Anatomy of a Fall,” and “Past Lives” all really seem that strong and that likely to make the field. But we know we’re getting 10 nominees, and picking that tenth nominee is perilous. Instead of a handful of films that all seem like they should get in, this is one of those weird years where none of the remaining candidates feel like the droid we’re looking for.
For most of the past year Oscar prognosticators had been penciling “The Color Purple” into that final spot, sight unseen. But then it shockingly missed out on a Best Picture nomination from the Golden Globes in the “Musical or Comedy” category (a category virtually designed to honor movies like “The Color Purple”), and Oscar boards promptly went into chaos.
Because it’s so widely acclaimed and it made the top ten with the Producers Guild, a lot of people are predicting “The Zone of Interest” to claim the last spot. That could absolutely happen—and I’m rooting for it, because I think “Zone” is the best film of 2023—but there’s virtually no precedent for such a difficult and alienating film getting a Best Picture nomination. Even in the 15 years since the lineup expanded, the closest comparison is probably “Amour,” but at least that had a real plot to speak of. I genuinely believe the Academy gets a little smarter and exhibits better taste every year, but I still don’t think “The Zone of Interest” will receive broad enough support to make it into the Best Picture race. (And then there are the issues of how many voters will actually watch the whole thing, or how it will play on screeners as opposed to in theaters, both of which could be substantial problems for its candidacy.)
Meanwhile “May December” seems to be leaving too many voters cold (and it was completely shut out by SAG and BAFTA), while the European trio of “Saltburn,” “All of Us Strangers,” and “Society of the Snow” have yet to make a dent with American awards voters. “Air” is still a possibility, and AFI picked “Across the Spider-Verse” for its top ten, but if either were a true contender here they likely would’ve been nominated with the Producers Guild.
And that brings us back to where we started—with “The Color Purple.” Yes, it’s surprising that it missed the cut with both the Globes and the Producers Guild, but it should have an advantage with the large numbers of Academy members in the craft branches, neither of which is the case in those other two voting bodies. As a big budget musical it’ll have ample attention from those craft voters, who may be far more excited to watch something bursting with color and dancing than they are a gray, subtitled Holocaust movie.
Anything could happen with that 10th spot, and I hope “The Zone of Interest” proves my pessimism wrong. But my head says it’ll be “The Color Purple.”
BEST DIRECTOR
Christopher Nolan, “Oppenheimer”
Martin Scorsese, “Killers of the Flower Moon”
Yorgos Lanthimos, “Poor Things”
Greta Gerwig, “Barbie”
Jonathan Glazer, “The Zone of Interest”
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Alexander Payne, “The Holdovers”
Justine Triet, “Anatomy of a Fall”
Bradley Cooper, “Maestro”
J.A. Bayona, “Society of the Snow”
Celine Song, “Past Lives”
No Academy branch has been responsible for more shocking omissions over the last decade (for example, Ridley Scott in 2016, Bradley Cooper in 2019, and Denis Villeneuve in 2022) than the Directors Branch, so this is often the hardest category to predict. The Directors Branch is one of the oldest and least diverse in the Academy, and their selections often lean artier (in a good way), more international (in a good way), and more gate-keep-y (in a not-so-good way) than the rest of the Academy.
Nolan, Scorsese, and Lanthimos still feel fairly safe (with “fairly” being the key word, as Scorsese and Lanthimos both missed out with BAFTA), but after that things could get weird. Gerwig should be firmly in, but the strong candidacy of Justine Triet worries me for both of them; because the Branch is so heavily male, they often have a hard time nominating women when there’s more than one to choose from. The Directors Guild picked Gerwig and Payne for their final two nominees, but the Academy Directors Branch usually nominates someone behind a non-English-language film. In simple terms, I think the fourth slot will go to one of the two widely beloved movies (“Barbie” and “The Holdovers”), and the fifth slot will go to one of the two critically adored European art house films (“The Zone of Interest” and “Anatomy of a Fall”). In those theoretical matchups, I’d give slight edges to “Barbie” for being so visually resplendent and “The Zone of Interest” for being so formally daring.
But it’ll be close, and there’s unfortunately a real chance that we’ll get an all-male lineup if the voters tacitly view their ballots as having only one slot for a woman (meaning Gerwig and Triet could split the vote). If that happens, I would expect Glazer and Payne to be the final nominees. But Bradley Cooper has made it abundantly clear just how badly he wants this nomination. That level of thirst shouldn’t work on the Directors Branch, but you never know with those contrarians.
BEST ACTOR
Cillian Murphy, “Oppenheimer”
Paul Giamatti, “The Holdovers”
Jeffrey Wright, “American Fiction”
Colman Domingo, “Rustin”
Bradley Cooper, “Maestro”
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Leonardo DiCaprio, “Killers of the Flower Moon”
Barry Keoghan, “Saltburn”
Andrew Scott, “All of Us Strangers”
I wrote last September that Best Actor already felt like it had been whittled down to a six-person race for the five nominations, and amazingly, after four months of campaigning and discourse and box office results, that still feels like where we are. Though Andrew Scott and Barry Keoghan have a small chance to shock people on nomination morning, the overwhelming odds are that the five nominees will come from the top six names listed above.
So who misses out? Murphy and Giamatti are the two locks, and then it gets tight. Jeffrey Wright so thoroughly owns his performance in “American Fiction” that it’s difficult to imagine anyone else in the role, and he has the advantage of being an actor that everyone has loved for decades but has never been nominated. Voters intrinsically like supporting people like that, just as they also love supporting actors who gave multiple great performances in the same year, as Colman Domingo did with “Rustin” and “The Color Purple.” Both got nominated by SAG, and I think both make the cut here, too.
The fifth SAG nomination went to Bradley Cooper, and as recently as five years ago he would have cruised to an Oscar nomination for his dedicated performance as Leonard Bernstein. But two things may hurt him here; the perhaps unfair perception that he was heavily overacting in the film, and the probably accurate perception that he doesn’t care as much about this category and he really just wants to be nominated for Best Director. That stuff matters to voters, and may cause a backlash among some. But the alternative is Leo, who shockingly missed the cut with SAG voters. When a star that huge can’t get nominated by the most heavily populist voting body, that’s a sign that the performance isn’t sitting right with people, and in this case, it’s probably that the character is just too deeply unlikeable. (Charismatic murderers can win Oscars left and right, but not sad-sack murderers.) It could go either way, and I still wouldn’t count out Scott or Keoghan, but I expect Cooper to claim the last spot (which means this would be the rare year where Best Actor at SAG and the Oscars line up 5-for-5).
BEST ACTRESS
Lily Gladstone, “Killers of the Flower Moon”
Emma Stone, “Poor Things”
Margot Robbie, “Barbie”
Carey Mulligan, “Maestro”
Sandra Hüller, “Anatomy of a Fall”
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Annette Bening, “Nyad”
Natalie Portman, “May December”
Greta Lee, “Past Lives”
Fantasia Barrino, “The Color Purple”
Welcome to the bloodbath. All nine names listed above should have a really good chance of being nominated, but math suggests that four of them somehow won’t be. Only Lily Gladstone and Emma Stone feel like true locks (despite Gladstone’s shocking BAFTA snub), and then you could probably draw the other three names out of a hat with the same success rate as trying to logically game it out. But let’s game it out anyway.
Support for “The Color Purple” seems to have coalesced around Danielle Brooks in the supporting race, while Greta Lee is the quintessential “They’d get in if it were any other year” contender. Without having the body of work of Portman or Mulligan, or the truly showy performance of Bening or Hüller, it’ll ultimately be too difficult for Lee to overcome the competition. Natalie Portman’s performance in “May December” is a hard one to talk yourself out of for Oscar prognosticating, because she’s portraying an actor researching (and getting lost in) a role, which the voters in the Academy’s Actors Branch should theoretically love. But SAG still didn’t go for it, and as mentioned above with DiCaprio, when a populist body like SAG fails to nominate someone of that fame level, it’s usually a bad sign for their Oscar chances.
In a field where many of the films might be on the Best Picture bubble, the overall strength of “Barbie” and “Maestro” should help Robbie and Mulligan get nominated, and if that’s how it plays out, that leaves Annette Bening and Sandra Hüller competing for the last spot. It could truly go either way, but I expect Hüller to win out for several reasons. Most obviously, her film is just far more beloved, and Neon is campaigning the hell out of it, while Netflix probably has bigger priorities than “Nyad” (including “Maestro” in this same category). But just as importantly is how the massive influx of Academy membership over the last decade will impact the race; the voting body has gotten much younger and more international, and far less beholden to Oscar tradition and the once-common “narrative win.” Ten years ago “Nyad” could have been the film to finally bring Bening her long-awaited Oscar win, but the new Academy is much more indifferent to viewing acting Oscars as de facto career achievement awards (which is partially why Glenn Close, Chadwick Boseman, Sylvester Stallone, and Angela Bassett all suffered surprising losses in recent years). Combine that with the overall year Hüller has had (she could also be a Best Supporting Actress nominee for “The Zone of Interest”), and she should be our final nominee.
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Robert Downey Jr., “Oppenheimer”
Ryan Gosling, “Barbie”
Mark Ruffalo, “Poor Things”
Willem Dafoe, “Poor Things”
Charles Melton, “May December”
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Matt Damon, “Oppenheimer”
Sterling K. Brown, “American Fiction”
Robert De Niro, “Killers of the Flower Moon”
Dominic Sessa, “The Holdovers”
One of the most interesting questions to get answered on nomination morning will be whether or not Charles Melton gets nominated here. If you go by the awards season so far, Melton’s domination should assure him a spot. But Oscar history says otherwise, and young men almost never get nominated for Best Supporting Actor (especially when they’re not in a Best Picture nominee, which Melton probably isn’t). And with beloved megastars like Matt Damon and Robert De Niro waiting in the wings, well, that’s a lot to overcome.
But Oscar precedent gets broken every year, and making predictions based purely on stats is both boring and pointless. Sometimes you just have a feeling, and Melton’s performance in “May December” gives me that feeling. Even for people that don’t think the movie really works, they still come away wowed by Melton’s vulnerability, and even if “May December” ultimately doesn’t break through in the Best Picture race, at least we know voters will watch it (a problem that plagues so many would-be contenders in the supporting races).
With Downey Jr. and Gosling totally safe, it’s then just a question of which other two actors from Best Picture contenders you think will make it in. I expect Ruffalo will get in despite missing with SAG (who seemed a little weirded out by “Poor Things”), and I expect De Niro to miss out for the same reason I think DiCaprio will—voting for the white men in “Killers of the Flower Moon” just makes people feel a bit gross. From there it’s down to Damon, Dafoe, and Brown, and if “Oppenheimer” is truly the Oscar juggernaut many expect, Damon could ride that to a nomination. But one thing we’ve learned about the Academy over the years is that a lot of voters just really love Willem Dafoe. If he can get nominated for “At Eternity’s Gate,” he should be able to get nominated for a top-tier Best Picture contender.
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Da’Vine Joy Randolph, “The Holdovers”
Emily Blunt, “Oppenheimer”
Danielle Brooks, “The Color Purple”
Penélope Cruz, “Ferrari”
Jodie Foster, “Nyad”
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America Ferrera, “Barbie”
Sandra Hüller, “The Zone of Interest”
Rosalind Pike, “Saltburn”
Julianne Moore, “May December”
Viola Davis, “Air”
Issa Rae, “American Fiction”
Florence Pugh, “Oppenheimer”
As with so many of these races, there seem to be three relatively safe contenders and then a lot of question marks. Randolph has become the favorite and easily the safest bet to actually win any of the four acting races, while Blunt and Brooks are nearly as certain to be nominated. Brooks even got in with BAFTA, who have an immensely troubled history nominating Black actors (astonishing fact: Denzel Washington has never received a BAFTA nomination), so concerns about her being vulnerable here have mostly been lifted.
From there it’s a question of what voters will prioritize. Cruz, Foster, Moore, and Davis are all past winners and among the most respected working actresses in the world. Pike and Rae are funny scene-stealers. Ferrera is the beating heart of her film (and delivers the monologue to prove it), while Hüller gives the most chilling portrait of evil you may ever see. And Pugh is in what could turn out to be the ultimate rising-tide Oscar juggernaut. It’s easy to talk yourself into any of them. Cruz should have the strongest case because she’s the one that most clearly combines several of the above qualities. She’s a past winner and well-respected legend who also happens to be the beating heart of her film and a funny (ish) scene-stealer. If voters actually watch “Ferrari” (which remains a substantial “if”), that should be an irresistible combo.
After that you just have to start talking yourself out of people for specious reasons, so let’s do it: “Air” has faded from memory, “Saltburn” is too much of an overall question mark, Hüller’s performance may leave voters too cold and uncomfortable (and they’re likely to honor her in Best Actress instead), Ferrera missed with SAG despite being in the year’s most popular movie, and I’ve just heard too many people say they didn’t really understand Moore’s performance in “May December.” That leaves Foster, who should enjoy the added benefit of being the most likable part of a classic feel-good movie. But beware a late surge for America Ferrera; she received an honorary award from the Critics Choice Association last weekend and gave a stirring speech that aired during the middle of Oscar voting. But how many Oscar voters who weren’t in the room actually watched the Critics Choice Awards? I’m betting not very many.
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
“Oppenheimer” (Christopher Nolan)
“Killers of the Flower Moon” (Eric Roth & Martin Scorsese)
“Poor Things” (Tony McNamara)
“Barbie” (Greta Gerwig & Noah Baumbach)
“American Fiction” (Cord Jefferson)
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“The Zone of Interest” (Jonathan Glazer)
“All of Us Strangers” (Andrew Haigh)
“Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” (Phil Lord, Christopher Miller, & Dave Callaham)
“Society of the Snow” (J.A. Bayona, Bernat Vilaplana, Jaime Marques, and Nicolás Casariego Córdoba)
At first glance this looks easy; five of the nine “safe” Best Picture nominees have screenplays based on other source material, so they should be our five nominees, right? The complicating factor is “The Zone of Interest.” While I don’t expect “Zone” to make it into the Best Picture field because it’s too transgressively arty, that’s a quality that the Writers Branch loves. And because Jonathan Glazer really reconceived the Martin Amis novel from the ground up, the voters could respond strongly to how much actual adapting work was involved.
But the problem with picking “Zone” to make it into the final five is the question of what it would knock out. “Oppenheimer,” “Barbie,” “Killers of the Flower Moon,” and “Poor Things” are probably the four films that will receive the most Oscar nominations overall, and they’re among the films that could actually win Best Picture. It’s almost inconceivable that any of them miss here. That leaves “American Fiction” as the only seemingly vulnerable contender to fall out, but, lest we forget, it’s actually about a writer, and the process, agony, and anonymity of writing. I just can’t see it getting snubbed by the Writers Branch.
BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
“The Holdovers” (David Hemingson)
“Anatomy of a Fall” (Justine Triet & Arthur Harari)
“Past Lives” (Celine Song)
“Maestro” (Bradley Cooper & Josh Singer)
“Saltburn” (Emerald Fennell)
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“May December” (Samy Burch & Alex Mechanik)
“Air” (Alex Convery)
“Asteroid City” (Wes Anderson & Roman Coppola)
“The Boy and the Heron” (Hayao Miyazaki)
“The Iron Claw” (Sean Durkin)
“Anatomy of a Fall,” “The Holdovers,” and “Past Lives” should all be completely safe here. Not only will all three likely be Best Picture nominees, but they’re all totally dependent on the beauty, complexity, and originality of their screenplays. But after that, this is the most wide-open category on the board.
Three of the biggest question marks for the overall Oscar field this year are “May December,” “Saltburn,” and “Air.” They could each receive multiple nominations or zero nominations and it wouldn’t be much of a surprise. They’re the films most likely to result in “Oh, I guess the Academy really liked that movie” tweets on nomination morning, and this is the category where that realization would most obviously manifest. If it turns out voters really like more than one of these, then “Maestro” could be vulnerable, because it probably relies the least on its screenplay, and the film’s structure is often the biggest complaint levied against it.
But as a likely Best Picture nominee “Maestro” has the inside track to a nomination here, and it remains the safest bet without any sense at all of which fringe contender could displace it. Unfortunately the other awards bodies are no help here, because the Globes only have one screenplay category, the Writers Guild hasn’t released their nominations yet, and BAFTA gave their fifth Original Screenplay nomination to “Barbie” (which isn’t eligible for this category with the Oscars). So truly anything could happen for this fifth slot, but “Saltburn” may have a slight advantage because it’s written by a previous winner of this category, and because it’s the contender that most frequently leaves viewers saying ‘Oh my’ (as opposed to “May December,” which leaves a lot of viewers saying ‘Huh?,’ or “Air,” which voters might have just entirely forgotten about). But don’t count out a total shock like Wes Anderson or Hiyao Miyazaki, who are both deeply respected by the Academy.
