2024 Oscar Predictions: Will “New” Diversity Rules Impact the Oscars?

Once you crawl out of the bubble of the mainstream media narrative (if you don’t know what I mean by that, chance are, you’re still in the bubble), you will see that people are talking about the new DEI rules that have now been made official for this year, however they were committed to the mandate back in 2020.

The thing is, you’d have to have on another planet for the past several years to not see that they already have made signficant changes to the industry, so this does seem a bit like overkill to most people “out there,” as opposed to “in here.”

Every movie, every television show, every advertisement you see now is cast “correctly” to leave no marginalized person behind. It’s kind of odd at times to watch how they manage to do this and sometimes it’s downright unsettling.

For instance, we have been hearing for so many years about “white privilege” being omnipresent, with microaggressions and what not. We have been conditioned, via several years of loud protests, firings, cancelations, social media beat-downs of what we’re allowed to say, what we’re not allowed to say. We all mostly live in strict compliance with these hard and fast new rules.

But then, you settle in to watch something — let’s say, a Lifetime movie — and suddenly you see a white husband who is married to a Black woman. They’re in a heated argument at the top of the stairs. He’s screaming at her. You know she’s about to tumble down the stairs because that’s why they’re arguing at the top of the stairs.

Now, it makes a big difference that she’s Black and he’s white. You have a running dialogue in your head with all of the little soldiers in your brain running around like the house in on fire, “Wait, he can’t say that!” They’re breaking all of the rules because we know now, because we’ve been told a million times, because we know we’ll be punished for stepping out of line, that he CAN’T talk to her that way as a white male. 

By this point, we’re completely taken out of the story (even though it’s a Lifetime movie and calling it a story is a stretch) because now we’re thinking about the elephant in the room. That is the problem with all of this madness we’ve been living through, no matter how good the intentions. To quote Jake LaMotta in a film that would never be made today, “It defeats its own purpose.”

All of that said, to most people out there, aka “the majority,” Hollywood has long since “gone woke.” Even if they’re talking about the DEI mandate, tm, they all understand that the horse has left the barn. It’s all the way over in another county, maybe even another state. EVERYTHING has changed.

We can all see their efforts to be correct and aspirational. We can see the strings. There is palpable desperation and fear in almost everything they do that they’ll be caught saying or doing something wrong and they’ll have to face an inquisition for their crimes. There will be massive social media swarms. The agonizing essays. The forced apologies. No one wants to go through that so they play it safe and audiences think, MEH.

Most of the media on the Left either won’t touch this subject or will write some kind of mushy apologist screed that will be acceptable to activists and Twitter. So the only people who are talking about it are on the outside, or on the Right – but it is a loud conversation and a pretty big story “out there.”

A policy like this in 2023 looks very different than it would have in 2020. But there is no getting around the punitive nature of it. It makes it seem like there was some grand conspiracy to keep [insert marginalized groups here] out of mainstream Hollywood. Such was never the case. Hollywood (used to) give the people what they pay for. That used to be how it was. If Julia Roberts and Tom Cruise could open movies, they would be paid a lot of money and more movies would be made by them.

As you can see by box office and ratings, when they forgo giving the public what it wants and instead give them what they should want (because it makes Twitter happy) then they lose money. There was never a sinister plot to oppress groups of people based on skin color, gender or “gender identity.”

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, a movie like The Godfather wouldn’t have won anyway, the mandate has nothing to do with that. We know that for the past several years, since Green Book, really, there has been such a wave of fear and panic in Hollywood that all voters go out of their way not to award the “white male” or even nominate the “white male’s” movie, even if it’s great.

All of that said, the question now is whether or not this will impact how Oscar voters vote — are we on the brink of massive backlash? Are voters, and Hollywood, ready to shuck it all and go “back to normal” and escape their “woke” cage? Who knows. Maybe. But probably not.

The good news is that there do seem to be some great films on the horizon, some I’m really looking forward to that I know will be honest portrayals and not performative casting — I can only hope that isn’t that moment where you can see them trying too hard to please activists. PLEASE STOP DOING THAT. 

Erik Anderson finally updated his predictions for June, so we have a good look at what he’s slotted in for Best Picture and Best Director.

Erik’s Best Picture predictions:

1. Killers of the Flower Moon (Apple Original Films/Paramount Pictures)
2. The Color Purple (Warner Bros)
3. Maestro (Netflix)
4. Oppenheimer (Universal Pictures)
5. The Zone of Interest (A24)
6. The Holdovers (Focus Features)
7. Dune Part Two (Warner Bros)
8. Past Lives (A24)
9. Barbie (Warner Bros)
10.  Saltburn (Amazon Studios)

And Best Director:

1. Martin Scorsese – Killers of the Flower Moon (Apple Original Films/Paramount Pictures)
2. Christopher Nolan – Oppenheimer (Universal Pictures)
3. Jonathan Glazer – The Zone of Interest (A24)
4. Bradley Cooper – Maestro (Netflix)
5. Alexander Payne – The Holdovers (Focus Features)
6. Denis Villeneuve – Dune Part Two (Warner Bros)
7. Celine Song – Past Lives (A24)
8. Blitz Bazawule – The Color Purple (Warner Bros)
9. Greta Gerwig – Barbie (Warner Bros)
10. Emerald Fennell – Saltburn (Amazon Studios)

I think overall Erik probably does better than I do with early predictions. I would say I’m more of a traditionalist than he is, meaning, I tend to look for Big Oscar Movies rather than teeny tiny ones. But since the Oscars have become nearly identical to the Spirit Awards in a lot of ways, he’s right that they do tend to lean in to that direction.

To that end, here are my predictions for this week, for what it’s worth:

1. Oppenheimer (Universal Pictures)
2. Killers of the Flower Moon (Apple Original Films/Paramount Pictures)
3. The Holdovers (Focus Features)
4. The Killer (Netflix)
5. Poor Things (Searchlight)
6. The Color Purple (WB)
7. Maestro (Netflix)
8. Ferrari (STX)
9. Next Goal Wins (Searchlight)
10. Past Lives (A24)

Then I have a list of films that I think have a pretty good shot, sight unseen.

1. Dune Part Two (WB)
2. Barbie (WB)
3. Napoleon (Apple)
4. Priscilla (A24)
5. Asteroid City (Focus)
6. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (Sony Pictures)
7. Barbie (WB)
8. Saltburn (Amazon)
9. The Zone of Interest (A24)
10. Drive-Away Dolls (Focus Features)

That’s quite a stacked deck of films almost no one has yet seen, with the exception of Martin Scorsese’s film, Past Lives and The Zone of Interest.

Best Director

1. Christopher Nolan – Oppenheimer (Universal Pictures)
2. Martin Scorsese – Killers of the Flower Moon (Apple Original Films/Paramount Pictures)
3. David Fincher — The Killer (Netflix)
4. Alexander Payne – The Holdovers (Focus Features)
5. Celine Song – Past Lives (A24)

And then:

1. Yorgos Lanthimos, Poor Things
2. Michael Mann, Ferrari
3. Taika Waititi, Next Goal Wins
4. Blitz Bazawule – The Color Purple
5. Sofia Coppola – Priscilla
6. Wes Anderson – Asteroid City
7. Emerald Fennell – Saltburn
8. Greta Gerwig – Barbie
9. Jonathan Glazer – The Zone of Interest
10. Bradley Cooper – Maestro
11. Denis Villeneuve – Dune Part Two

Best Actor

1. Bradley Cooper – Maestro
2. Cillian Murphy – Oppenheimer
3. Leonardo DiCaprio – Killers of the Flower Moon
4. Joaquin Phoenix – Napoleon
5. Michael Fassbender – The Killer / or Next Goal Wins

And then:

1. Adam Driver, Ferrari
2. Paul Giamatti – The Holdovers
3. Colman Domingo – Rustin
4. Anthony Hopkins – Freud’s Last Session
5. Barry Keoghan – Saltburn

Best Actress

1. Fantasia Barrino – The Color Purple
2. Lily Gladstone – Killers of the Flower Moon (if lead)
3. Jessica Lange – Long Day’s Journey Into Night
4. Emma Stone — Poor Things
5. Kate Winslet — Lee

And then:

1. Helen Mirren, Golda
2. Greta Lee – Past Lives
3. Annette Bening – Nyad
4. Carey Mulligan – Maestro
5. Regina King – Shirley

Best Supporting Actor

1. Robert De Niro – Killers of the Flower Moon
2. Ryan Gosling – Barbie  (if supporting)
3. Robert Downey, Jr., -Oppenheimer
4. Matt Damon – Oppenheimer (Oppenheimer)
5. Colman Domingo – The Color Purple

And then:

1. Jesse Plemons – Killers of the Flower Moon
2. Willem Dafoe – Poor Things
3. Samuel L. Jackson – The Piano Lesson
4.   Ben Foster – Long Day’s Journey Into Night
5. Louis Gossett Jr. – The Color Purple

Best Supporting Actress

1. Kaimana – Next Goal Wins
2. Taraji P. Henson – The Color Purple
3. Da’Vine Joy Randolph – The Holdovers
4. Emily Blunt – Oppenheimer
5. Vanessa Kirby – Napoleon

And then:

1. Rosamund Pike – Saltburn
2. Danielle Brooks – The Color Purple (Warner Bros)
3. Shailene Woodley – Ferrari
4. Sarah Silverman – Maestro
5. Florence Pugh — Oppenheimer

As you can see, there are many different ways to read the race, depending on how you want to look at it. I have, for instance, a transgender actress winning in supporting – that’s because if she manages to earn a nomination, there is no way she will not win, making history and the like.

Most people have the Color Purple as a strong contender heading in because of the subject matter and the film’s own history at the Oscars. There is no doubt people like me, and Erik, aren’t factoring in “identity” as a one of the key factors in predicting the Oscars.

As for the reputation of Hollywood and the Oscars, that ship sailed long ago. We could be in the death rattle phase. Although maybe not – perhaps we’re on the brink of a renaissance. Hope springs eternal.