2024 Oscar Predictions – Is This Greta Gerwig’s Year?

The Oscars can’t live with or without Barbie. How do they ignore the highest-grossing film of all time by a female director? But on the other hand, how do they actually give out such a prestigious award to what amounts to a very well-made (brilliant in fact) advertisement for a toy franchise? At the moment, only Perri Nemiroff over at Gold Derby has the courage to actually push Barbie to the top of her predictions, but honestly, I don’t think it’s such a bad idea. You have to ask yourself the following question: which film is likely to pass the SAG ensemble standing ovation test?

Now, I realize just mentioning it out loud mucks with the organic nature of such a powerful tool, but it hasn’t failed us yet, those of us who have been tracking it. What movie is so beloved by actors it inspires them to leap to their feet and wildly applaud?

This was the moment in 2020 when the standing ovation conspiracy theory was born: when the cast of Parasite took the stage, causing a frenzy at the SAG Awards:

Why was Parasite winning at the SAG such a big deal? Because it beat Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and The Irishman, two films that had many of the most famous actors in Hollywood up against actors from South Korea that most Americans were unfamiliar with. For those actors to get a standing ovation at SAG marked a sudden change in the trajectory of that year’s awards race.

Parasite is a great movie and the acting ensemble was fantastic, but it always seemed to me they were standing for a different reason. And I personally believe that it’s because they were taking so much heat back then for the “whiteness” of the acting lineup. In January 2020, just before the entire industry upended itself with both the protests over the summer and COVID, April Reign (creator of the #OscarsSoWhite hashtag) wrote in Variety:

Overwhelmingly, what we saw in 2019 with these nominations is that most of them are films that reflect the experiences of straight white men. Since the majority of the Academy are white males, and the nominations are viewed through their lens, that may explain why we are seeing the nominations that we are. I am not using words like racism or discrimination or bigotry; I am saying we all bring our own lens and our own experiences to our entertainment consumption. And it’s a problem that the Academy’s voting membership is not required to view the films before they vote, so it really becomes a popularity contest — a popularity contest among mostly straight white males.

Hollywood was already a simmering kettle on its way toward the explosion we would see a few months later that led to dramatic changes to the film awards industry. Parasite was the major Oscar contender that year with a non-white cast. The other films up for SAG ensemble were Jojo Rabbit and Bombshell. That is why I think (at least partly) the actors threw so much of their support behind Parasite both at the SAG and at the Oscars (in addition to it being a great movie).

Heading into the Oscars, all of the Best Picture nominees featured predominantly white casts except Parasite:

Ford v Ferrari
The Irishman
Jojo Rabbit
Joker
Little Women
Marriage Story
1917
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

It was the year Jennifer Lopez missed out on a Supporting Actress nod, and thus, the only non-white acting nominee that year was Cynthia Erivo for Harriet. All of the other nominees and frontrunners were white. The winners were:

Joaquin Phoenix, Joker
Renee Zellweger, Judy
Laura Dern, Marriage Story
Brad Pitt, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

This was one year after the Green Book-apocalypse wherein the Academy and Hollywood were being excoriated for racism — right? You remember this too. Thus, Parasite’s win was a “get out of jail free” card for the SAG actors, whose image is everything, and for the Academy. The next day’s headlines was about making history with the first “International Feature” film not in the English language winning Best Picture.

So touchy are all of us who cover this industry and who watch these awards that we literally sweat every single word used to describe Parasite’s win. Can’t say “first foreign film,” can’t say “first non-American film” because no one can be offended at any time for any reason. Whatever it was, there is no doubt in my mind that there was pressure on everyone not to pick a film by a white director (they were all so good that year, and — again — Parasite is a fine winner).

The next year doesn’t really count because of COVID, but by 2021 the same thing happened when CODA won. It was a similar kind of feeling to Parasite’s win — that the standing ovation was for more than just celebrating the success of the film. Hardly anyone outside of the industry had even seen CODA, but the idea of a film with a predominantly deaf cast winning meant they felt they were moving the needle for marginalized groups.

And of course, it’s a no-brainer that last year’s Everything Everywhere All at Once was the rapture unlike anything I’ve ever seen. All points drove back to the center, the driving purpose for the industry to do good work, to move the needle, to have films people want to see, to be modern, to be “woke” and to feel alive again. That’s why the film won as many acting awards as it did — three, along with Best Picture, Best Director and Best Screenplay:

With the exception of Nomadland, the SAG ensemble has decided Best Picture three out of the last four years. Let’s look at how it stacks up throughout their entire history, just for fun:

1995 — Apollo 13 (Braveheart won BP)
1996 — The Birdcage (The English Patient won BP)
1997 — The Full Monty (Titanic won BP)
1998 — Shakespeare in Love
1999 — American Beauty
2000 — Traffic (Gladiator won BP)
2001 — Gosford Park (A Beautiful Mind won BP)
2002 — Chicago
2003 — Return of the King
2004 — Sideways (Million Dollar Baby won BP)
2005 — Crash
2006 — Little Miss Sunshine (The Departed won BP)
2007 — No Country for Old Men
2008 — Slumdog Millionaire
–Oscar expands Best Picture lineup from 5 to 10
2009 — Inglourious Basterds (The Hurt Locker won BP)
2010 — The King’s Speech
–Oscar allows for voters to choose between 5 and 10 nominees
2011 — The Help (The Artist won BP)
2012 — Argo
–SAG merges with AFTRA on March 30, 2012
2013 — American Hustle (12 Years a Slave won BP)
2014 — Birdman
2015 — Spotlight
2016 — Hidden Figures (Moonlight won BP, La La Land not nominated for SAG)
2017 — Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (The Shape of Water won BP, not nominated for SAG)
2018 — Black Panther (Green Book won BP, not nominated for SAG)
2019 — Parasite
2020 — The Trial of the Chicago 7 (Nomadland won BP, not nominated for SAG)
–Oscar goes back to 10 nominees
2021 — CODA
2022 — Everything Everywhere All at Once

Obviously, not every film that gets a standing ovation at SAG went on to win Best Picture, like Black Panther, Hidden Figures, or The Help, but something has definitely changed since Parasite’s win, which bounced off of Green Book’s win, which bounced off the whole industry upending itself in 2016 with the election of Trump.

That brings us all the way up to today. What movie will inspire SAG voters to leap to their feet and celebrate a cast? Do you think they will be finished with the need to feel some kind of rapture and just vote for a film they think is the most accomplished? I don’t. I think they will want to feel inspired to vote for something that moves the needle.

What films do we think will win an ensemble nomination this year? Well, we know we have three films already that will surely get there with ease:

Barbie
Oppenheimer
Killers of the Flower Moon

That leaves only two slots with all of festival season headed our way. What are the movies with big casts upcoming and lots of actors in them? Generally, they don’t like movies featuring a small-ish cast, or a “two hander” as Anne Thompson likes to call them, but would they break the rule for something like Past Lives?

Here are the films I think have a good shot:

The Color Purple — Fantasia Barrino, Halle Bailey, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Taraji P. Henson, Louis Gossett, Jr.
The Killer — Michael Fassbender, Arliss Howard, Tilda Swinton, Charles Parnell, etc.
Next Goal Wins — Michael Fassbender, etc.
Past Lives — Greta Lee, Seung Ah Moon, Tee Yoo, Seung Min Yin, John Magaro, etc.
Air — Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Viola Davis, Chris Tucker, Chris Messina, etc.
The Bikeriders — Austin Butler, Jodie Comer, Tom Hardy, Mike Fast, etc.
Rustin — Colman Domingo, Chris Rock, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, etc.
Maestro — Carey Mulligan, Bradley Cooper, etc.
Poor Things — Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe, Ramy Youssef
The Holdovers — Paul Giamatti, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Dominic Sessa

At the moment, I am thinking that the movie that drives the standing ovation this year is going to be Barbie. The success of the movie combined with how fun of an experience it is will mean that when Margot Robbie, Kate McKinnon, Ryan Gosling, Issa Rae, Hari Nef, etc. take the stage, it’s going to be a kind of rapture, I figure. I just don’t see Hollywood passing this up.

The Curious Case of Best Actress

A sudden plot shift in the predicting landscape has AwardsWatch’s Erik Anderson putting Annette Bening at the top for Nyad (based on Netflix’s track record with Best Actress) and Fantasia Barrino, who had been at the top of his and other’s lists for a while now, all the way down at number five. Why?

In the Reddit group Oscar Race, the following:

I mean, if Cynthia Erivo reprised the role for the movie, I could get that. But Fantasia has only been in one other movie: a Lifetime movie where she played herself. Can some please explain why she’s in everyone’s predictions, expecting her to win

The hive minds on Reddit and Twitter and even Gold Derby tend to come to decisions by group think or consensus without really knowing for sure what the industry will respond to. Erik’s full Best Actress lineup:

1. Annette Bening – NYAD (Netflix) (▲)
2. Sandra Hüller – Anatomy of a Fall (NEON) (▲)
3. Carey Mulligan – Maestro (Netflix) (▲)
4. Margot Robbie – Barbie (Warner Bros) (▼)
5. Fantasia Barrino – The Color Purple (Warner Bros) (▼)
6. Greta Lee – Past Lives (A24) (▼)
7. Emma Stone – Poor Things (Searchlight Pictures) (▲)
8. Cailee Spaeny – Priscilla (A24) (-)
9. Natalie Portman – May December (Netflix) (-)
10.  Vanessa Kirby – Napoleon (Apple Original Films/Sony Pictures) (▲)

Meanwhile, Best Actress over at Gold Derby is all over the place, with Helen Mirren for Golda, Carey Mulligan for Maestro, Greta Lee for Past Lives, and Fantasia Barrino.

So why am I going with Barrino? Because she has the best “Oscar story,” and what I mean by that is the original Color Purple came in with ten nominations and won zero. Whoopi Goldberg did not win the Oscar, nor did Oprah. I think that legacy is going to be changed on Oscar night. I could be wrong, but this film has a special relationship to the Oscars that elevates it from just another movie. It is an opportunity to rewrite the narrative. I think her acting won’t matter as much as her powerhouse singing.

Here are my full predictions for this week:

Best Picture
Barbie
Oppenheimer
Killers of the Flower Moon
The Killer
Past Lives
The Holdovers
Poor Things
The Color Purple
Rustin
Anatomy of a Fall

Also keeping my eye on: Dune: Part Two, Napoleon, Next Goal Wins, The Boys in the Boat, Zone of Interest, Napoleon, The Bikeriders, Ferrari, Saltburn, Maestro, Rustin, Anatomy of a Fall

Best Director
Greta Gerwig, Barbie
Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer
Martin Scorsese, Killers of the Flower Moon
David Fincher, The Killer
Celine Song, Past Lives

Keeping an eye on: Denis Villeneuve, Dune: Part Two; Alexander Payne, The Holdovers; Justine Triet, Anatomy of a Fall; Taika Waititi, Next Goal Wins; Blitz Bazawule, The Color Purple; George Clooney, The Boys in the Boat; Yorgos Lanthimos, Poor Things; Alexander Payne, The Holdovers; Sofia Coppola, Priscilla; Ridley Scott, Napoleon; Michael Mann, Ferrari

Best Actor
Cillian Murphy, Oppenheimer
Colman Domingo, Rustin
Bradley Cooper, Maestro
Leonardo DiCaprio, Killers of the Flower Moon
Paul Giamatti, The Holdovers
Alts: Michael Fassbender, The Killer; Joaquin Phoenix, Napoleon; Adam Driver, Ferrari

Best Actress
Fantasia Barrino, The Color Purple
Annette Bening, Nyad
Sandra Huller, Anatomy of a Fall
Margot Robbie, Barbie
Helen Mirren, Golda
Alts: Greta Lee, Past Lives; Emma Stone, Poor Things; Jessica Lange, Long Day’s Journey into Night; Helen Mirren, Golda

Supporting Actor
Robert Downey Jr., Oppenheimer
Ryan Gosling, Barbie
Robert De Niro, Killers of the Flower Moon
Dominic Sessa, The Holdovers
John Magaro, Past Lives

Supporting Actress
America Ferrera, Barbie
Lily Gladstone, Killers of the Flower Moon
Emily Blunt, Oppenheimer
Da’Vine Joy Randolph, The Holdovers
Jodie Foster, Nyad
Alts: Taraji P. Henson, The Color Purple; Vanessa Kirby, Napoleon

Original Screenplay
Rustin
Past Lives
The Holdovers
Saltburn
Air

Adapted Screenplay
Oppenheimer
Barbie
Killers of the Flower Moon
The Killer
Poor Things

Editing
Oppenheimer
The Killer
Killers of the Flower Moon
Barbie
Dune: Part Two

Cinematography
Oppenheimer
Barbie
Killers of the Flower Moon
The Killer
Dune: Part Two

Sound
Oppenheimer
Barbie
Napoleon
Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning
The Color Purple

Production Design
Barbie
Killers of the Flower Moon
Dune: Part Two
Oppenheimer
Wonka

Costume Design
Barbie
Wonka
Oppenheimer
Dune: Part Two
Napoleon

Visual Effects
Oppenheimer
Dune: Part Two
Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
Napoleon

Original Score
Oppenheimer
Killers of the Flower Moon
The Killer
Dune: Part Two
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse