What a remarkable year it has been for movies. There were so many great films it feels unfair that 2024 has to follow in its footsteps. That’s one act I wouldn’t want to follow as a filmmaker. With so many incredible options, its still a bit of a surprise that the Producers Guild (PGA) and Oscar Best Picture nominations aligned ten-for-ten for the first time in history. Leading the pack, Oppenheimer emerged as an undeniable force, sweeping top honors across at PGA, Directors Guild (DGA), Screen Actors Guild (SAG), Globes, British Academy (BAFTA), and Critics’ Choice (CCA) – an achievement only shared by four other films since SAG’s inception in 1995: American Beauty (1999), The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (2003), Slumdog Millionaire (2008), and Argo (2012). All four of those films went on to win Best Picture at the Oscars, something we fully expect Oppenheimer to achieve on March 10.
Reflecting on my 15th Oscar race online, this awards season has been quite a thrill for me. After five years of disagreeing with each other, Oscar and I will see eye-to-eye on the best film of the year since Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water. Amidst the thrill of seeing a film I love win, the repeated disappointment of watching Bradley Cooper’s losses looms large.
Following tradition, I’m categorizing my final predictions into tiers, mirroring the structure of fantasy baseball/football projections many analysts use. For those less aware, it’s simple – a tier ranking system allows you to divide a subject in terms of best to worst, most to least, easiest to hardest – you get the point, right? In this case, we are looking at grouping the easiest races up to the most difficult to predict. I break things down into three segments: Hand Them the Oscar Now (Easy tier – aka: don’t overthink it); This Could Go Either Way (Challenging tier: clear front-runner present, but sneaky underdog exists); and Oscar Pool Winners (Expert tier: this is where you will separate yourself from your rival Oscar predictors. Many of these categories have more than two possible outcomes or no clear front-runner).
For each prediction, I’ll unveil the anticipated winner (final prediction), what could win (upset alert!), and what should win (regardless of the selection being nominated or not). Additionally, I’ll provide insights, stats, or analysis to enrich the forecast.
As I spelled out in last year’s Oscar Prediction Manifesto, references to key years in Oscar history will serve to underscore the evolving dynamics of Academy voting, including pivotal changes such as the adoption of preferential voting in 2009 (for a clearer understanding of what a preferential ballot is, refer to Sasha’s breakdown here). Another big change happened in 2000, when after years of BAFTA taking place after the Oscars, they suddenly moved in front and became a major precursor for Academy (AMPAS) results. In 2012, the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) merged with the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) and became SAG-AFTRA. Another major change has been AMPAS’ initiative to diversify its membership. Per the LA Times, in January 2016, a second year of the #OscarsSoWhite firestorm led the academy to publicly announce an initiative to double the number of women and minorities in its ranks — then about 1,500 and 535, respectively — by 2020. You can read more about the Academy’s efforts to diversify their organization here, but the gist is those who select the awards now look a little different than, say, 20 years ago. As a reminder: 2000, 2009, and 2012 are a few key dates, with recent history weighing in more than ever due to membership diversification.
Savvy? Ok, then.
Here. We. Go.
Hand Them the Oscar Now (all categories are listed in order of confidence)
Supporting Actress
Will Win: Da’Vine Joy Randolph (The Holdovers)
Could Win: There is no indication of who would win in an upset. This is the lock of the night.
Should Win: Da’Vine Joy Randolph
Stats/Analysis: In the acting categories, there are four major precursors: SAG, BAFTA, CCA, and The Golden Globes. Da’Vine swept these awards on top of winning nearly every single regional critics’ group prizes. Since 2000, SAG winners have lined up with Oscar 18/23 times in this category, including 13 of the last 14 (10 of 11 since the SAG-AFTRA merge). The only Oscar-winner not to take home SAG in that stretch was Regina King (If Beale Street Could Talk), who wasn’t nominated at SAG. In those same 23 years, Globes has aligned with Oscar 14 times, while BAFTA and CCA have paired with Oscar 16 times.
Director
Will Win: Christopher Nolan (Oppenheimer)
Could Win: There is no indication of who would win in an upset, though Yorgos Lanthimos (Poor Things) and Martin Scorsese (Killers of the Flower Moon) are the only other nominees recognized at the DGA.
Should Win: Christopher Nolan, and it’s about damn time.
Stats/Analysis: Nolan won DGA, BAFTA, CCA, Globes, and a slew of other critics’ prizes. DGA is the most accurate Oscar precursor. The two groups have only disagreed 9 times in 76 years (88% efficient). The DGA winner’s movie has won Best Picture at the Oscars all but 19 times in that span as well (75%). Since 2000, the DGA winner has matched with Oscar 19 out of 23 years, and nine of the past ten (Sam Mendes is the only DGA winner to lose Oscar in that span). The CCA-winner has gone seven in a row, while BAFTA and Globes have matched six of the last eight.
Fun Fact: Justine Triet (Anatomy of a Fall) and Jonathan Glazer (The Zone of Interest) mark the eighth and ninth directors to steer international features and earn nominations for Best Director in the past six years. That is two more than were nominated in the first 40 years of the Academy Awards.
Picture
Will Win: Oppenheimer – I’d just like to pat myself on the back for this. I predicted Oppenheimer in my initial predictions and never moved it out of the front-runner position all year. Do I get any cookies for that? No…? Ok…
Could Win: I guess if I had to choose something to upset Oppy, it might be Poor Things, whose only precursor misses were SAG Ensemble and BAFTA Director nominations. It is also one of only two other films nominated for Director, Screenplay, Acting, and Editing, the four major categories a Picture-winner often shows up in. The other is Anatomy of a Fall, for the record, and neither were nominated for SAG Ensemble. The only films to win Picture without a SAG Ensemble nom are Braveheart (1995), The Shape of Water (2017), Green Book (2018), and Nomadland (2020). For those who believe The Zone of Interest is a potential spoiler, I would call out its lack of Acting and Editing nominations. The actors make up the largest branch in the Academy. In the last 30 years, only four films have won Best Picture without a single acting nomination: Braveheart (1995), The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003), Slumdog Millionaire (2008), and Parasite (2019). Only 11 films have ever won Picture without an acting nom. In the preferential ballot era, no film has won Best Picture without at least one nomination in acting or Editing.
Should Win: Oppenheimer
Stats/Analysis: How do you bet against a film this big, this great, made this much money, and then swept its way through awards season? The answer: You don’t. Only two films have won the top prize from both PGA and SAG and not gone on to win Best Picture – Apollo 13 (1995) and Little Miss Sunshine (2006) – and only one film has won the top prize from PGA, DGA, and SAG and not gone on to win Best Picture – Apollo 13.
Fun Fact: In the last 14 years, 118 out of 135 films nominated for Best Picture also received a PGA nomination (87.4%).
Fun Fact #2: Perhaps the strongest argument against Oppy winning is that it has too many nominations. Silly, right? But only six of the last 19 films to lead the field in nominations have gone on to win Best Picture (32%).
International Feature
Will Win: The Zone of Interest
Could Win: Society of the Snow is the only other nominee that received a BAFTA nod, as well as both CCA and Globes.
Should Win: Anatomy of a Fall (not nominated)
Stats/Analysis: Man, what could have been one of the more interesting races on the night has been reduced to simply looking at the only nominee up for Best Picture (and Director, Screenplay, and Sound).
Fun Fact: The five countries with the most nominations in this category are France (40), Italy (34), Germany (22), Spain (21), and Japan (19). With France’s decision to not submit Anatomy of a Fall as their official entry, they must sit back and watch as its four closest competitors all gain ground. France has won this category 12 times, second only to Italy (14), and probably missed out on narrowing that gap to one.
Film Editing
Will Win: Jennifer Lame (Oppenheimer)
Could Win: Laurent Sénéchal (Anatomy of a Fall)
Should Win: Jennifer Lame
Stats/Analysis: The Editors Guild (ACE) did not announce their winners until five days after Oscar voting came to a close, so while they may not influence this outcome, I’m not sure that it mattered. Oppenheimer is a masterclass in film editing, and Lame’s extraordinary work will not be denied. Along with winning ACE, Lame won BAFTA and CCA. Interestingly, this is a category where the precursors aren’t incredibly foretelling. ACE is usually the best bet, lining up 15 times in 23 years (65%), while BAFTA predicted the Oscar 11 times in that same span (48%). CCA did not hand out this award until 2009 and has matched with Oscar six times in 14 years (43%). BAFTA has been the most accurate in recent years, though. While it has only matched 11 out of 23 years, those 11 pairings came in the last 16 years (69%). Make of all that what you will, but do not ignore this stat: since the inception of the preferential ballot, Sound and Film Editing have quite a connection. In that time (since 2009), the Film Editing winner has been nominated in Sound 13 out of 14 years. The only Editing winner in that stretch that was not nominated for Sound? Just last year, when Everything Everywhere All At Once ended that stat’s 13-year run. In the preferential ballot era of 2009-2020, there were two sound categories. Over that stretch, the Editing winner also won at least one Sound category 10 times in 11 years. Of those 10 times, it won both Sound categories five times. Editing and Sound winners have matched two of the three years since AMPAS went to one Sound category, missing last year when Top Gun: Maverick took Sound after losing Editing.
Fun Fact: For the 11th time in 16 years, all five films nominated for Best Film Editing are also nominated for Picture.
Original Score
Will Win: Ludwig Göransson (Oppenheimer)
Could Win: Robbie Robertson (Killers of the Flower Moon)
Should Win: Hard to argue with Göransson’s incredible score, but I would have loved to at least see Michael Giacchino nominated for his heavenly themes from Society of the Snow.
Stats/Analysis: Göransson has swept the awards season, winning BAFTA, Globes, and CCA, all of which have matched with Oscar 14 times in 23 years.
Fun Fact: 20 of the last 23 winners have been nominated for Picture (Frida, 2002; The Hateful Eight, 2015; and Soul, 2020; were the exceptions), so unless John Williams pulls off a massive upset, that streak will move to 21 out of 24. Speaking of the GOAT, John Williams has now been nominated 54 times in his career (49 for Score). That puts him alone at the top for Score nominations, and second behind only Walt Disney (59 nominations) for the most total nominations in Oscar history. Williams, 91 at the time of his nomination, broke his own record for the oldest nominee for Score (or any category) in Academy history.
Supporting Actor
Will Win: Robert Downey Jr. (Oppenheimer)
Could Win: Ryan Gosling (Barbie)
Should Win: Robert Downey Jr.
Stats/Analysis: Like Da’Vine above, Robert Downey Jr. has swept his way through the award circuit, picking up every meaningful precursor along the way. SAG, BAFTA, CCA, Globes, and a ton of critics’ prizes. Fourteen out of the last sixteen SAG winners in this category went on to win the Oscar.
Fun Fact: This will be the third year in a row where the Supporting Actor winner starred in the Best Picture winner.
Cinematography
Will Win: Hoyte van Hoytema (Oppenheimer)
Could Win: Robbie Ryan (Poor Things), who won the BSC (British version of ASC).
Should Win: Hoyte van Hoytema
Stats/Analysis: Like ACE with Editing, the Cinematographers Guild (ASC) did not announce their winners until five days after Oscar voting closed. While Oppy’s ASC win would have been nice to have prior to Oscar voting ending, Cinematography feels all but sewn up. Hoyte won BAFTA and CCA before taking home ASC, and only lost the BSC to Ryan. The BAFTA win is convincing alone – 10 of the last 11 BAFTA winners have matched with Oscar (Nomadland lost to Mank in 2020).
Fun Fact: El Conde is the 23rd foreign-language film nominated for Cinematography. Five have won.
This Could Go Either Way
Documentary Feature
Will Win: 20 Days in Mariupol
Could Win: Bobi Wine: The People’s President – the only film other than 20 Days to be nominated for DGA. Bobi Wine won IDA as well.
Should Win: Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie (not nominated)
Stats/Analysis: Talk about capturing the zeitgeist! Mstyslav Chernov’s film captures the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a subject that would be hard for Academy members to resist. The recent murder of Alexei Navalny (the subject of last year’s Documentary Oscar-winner) only adds fuel to the fire. 20 Days won DGA and BAFTA, and was nominated for PGA (it lost to American Symphony, not nominated). If this category wasn’t consistently erratic, I’d be genuinely surprised if anything else won.
Fun Fact: Six of the last seven CCA winners failed to receive an Oscar nomination. Summer of Soul is the only Doc in that time to be nominated. The CCA winners that Oscar did not nominate: Jane, Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, Apollo 11, Dick Johnson is Dead, Good Night Oppy, and Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie.
Lead Actor
Will Win: Cillian Murphy (Oppenheimer)
Could Win: Paul Giamatti (The Holdovers)
Should Win: As God as my witness, Bradley Cooper’s performance in Maestro will be one that is looked back on and discussed in small, dark corners as being the rightful winner here. That being said, what an incredible year! I take nothing away from Murphy and Giamatti’s performances (among others), and feel that either would be an incredible winner in any given year. It’s just unfortunate that Cooper will have to win a makeup Oscar for this performance.
Stats/Analysis: I held onto Cooper in this category until SAG, hoping he had a shot there. The SAG stat for Lead Actor is pretty astounding – 22 out of 29 SAG winners in this category have won again at Oscar, including 17 of the last 19 (Denzel lost in 2016 to Affleck; Boseman lost to Hopkins in 2020). Once Cillian Murphy took home SAG, the race here was all but over. Having already won the Globe and BAFTA – eight of the last nine BAFTA winners (and 15 of the last 19) have gone on to win Oscar in this category – makes for a pretty unstoppable force. Since 2000, 13 actors have won SAG, Globe, and BAFTA. All 13 won the Oscar. Giamatti is probably his biggest threat to winning, having taken home the other Globe award plus the CCA. As Sasha has mentioned on our All This and the Oscars Too podcast, the last Lead Actor winner to star in the Best Picture-winning film was Jean Dujardin (The Artist) back in 2011. In the SAG era, only four films have taken Lead Actor and Picture (American Beauty, Gladiator, The King’s Speech, and The Artist).
Original Screenplay
Will Win: Justine Triet, Arthur Harari (Anatomy of a Fall)
Could Win: David Hemingson (The Holdovers)
Should Win: Hemingson
Stats/Analysis: This feels like a three-horse race with a pretty strong front runner. While my vote would go to David Hemingson’s perfect and memorable script – and FilmTwitter would likely bestow the Oscar to Celine Song for Past Lives – the Triet/Harari duo is hard to bet against after claiming BAFTA and Globe prizes. Their film is not eligible for the Writers Guild Awards (WGA), or else I’m sure it would have been nominated there as well. The Globes are a pretty solid forecast for Oscar, though they do not separate Adapted from Original. Fourteen of the last twenty-three Globe Screenplay winners won one of the Screenplay categories at Oscar. There has been one less overlap in those twenty-three years with BAFTA for Original Screenplay, while the Brits have matched with Oscar only twice in the last six years. The best precursors for Original Screenplay over the past twenty-three years have been CCA and WGA, where fifteen of their winners have won Oscar. WGA won’t announce their champions until after the Oscars this year (blame the need for a strike, I guess) and the CCA went to Barbie, which AMPAS moved to the Adapted category. With no help from WGA or CCA, Anatomy has the best grades coming into Oscar night.
Fun Fact: Five of Alexander Payne’s eight feature films have received Screenplay nominations.
Animated Feature
Will Win: Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
Could Win: The Boy and the Heron
Should Win: Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, but I would have loved if Suzume had been nominated
Stats/Analysis: Both Spidey and Heron have BAFTA noms, which is good since no film has won the Oscar in this category without a BAFTA nomination first. The only other nominee with a BAFTA nomination is Elemental. Spidey crushed it at the Annies (the Animators awards) while Heron won BAFTA. Annies have matched with Oscar 15 times in 22 years, while BAFTA has matched 15 of the last 18. Spidey won VES while Heron won Globes. The Globe winner forecasted the Oscar seven times in the last eight years, while the VES (Visual Effects Society/Guild) winner has matched 16 out of 20. So how do we break the tie? Since the ACE Eddies have awarded Animated Feature films (2009), no film has won the Oscar without a nomination here first. In fact, their winner has matched with the Animated Feature Oscar winner 13 out of 14 times (The Lego Movie won ACE when the Oscar went to Big Hero Six). Spidey was not only nominated for ACE, but won their prize. Heron was not even nominated. In a close race, I will let that dictate my prediction.
Fun Fact: Something interesting about the VES win: in 2014, the Oscar-winner was Big Hero 6, which lost Annies, Globes, BAFTA, and ACE. The only precursor to forecast this huge upset was VES.
Costume Design
Will Win: Holly Waddington (Poor Things)
Could Win: Jacqueline Durran (Barbie)
Should Win: Waddington
Stats/Analysis: Waddington took the Costume Designers Guild (CDG) for Period Film and BAFTA; Durran took home CDG for Fantasy Film and CCA. The CCA winner took home the Oscar 12 times in 14 years and five of the last six. The BAFTA winner has won the Oscar 12 times in 15 years and three of the last four. Pretty even. In the time that CDG has separated Period from fantasy (started in 2005), CDG Period winners have outscored Fantasy winners seven to three with Oscar overlap. The Academy simply has a taste for a period costume over a more contemporary design. Some might even argue the costumes are less original in Barbie (the same who would argue its Screenplay belongs in Adapted, perhaps?)
Fun Fact: In the 23 Oscars since 2000, Costume Design and Production Design winners have come from the same film ten times. So whatever you pick here would make sense to double-down on in…
Production Design
Will Win: Poor Things (Production Design: James Price and Shona Heath; Set Decoration: Zsuzsa Mihalek)
Could Win: Barbie (Production Design: Sarah Greenwood; Set Decoration: Katie Spencer)
Should Win: Poor Things
Stats/Analysis: Barbie’s Production Design is extraordinary and would be a great winner. The Barbie team won CCA and the Set Decorators Society of America (SDSA) Award for Fantasy/Sci-Fi. The team behind Poor Things took home prizes from BAFTA, Art Directors Guild (ADG) for Fantasy, and SDSA for Period (as well as their Best Picture). The ADG Period winner was Oppenheimer, if you want to throw a third challenger into the arena. The SDSA track record is too new to really base anything on. I only cite them because it tells us which way a group of voters leaned (one of the few groups to go against Oppy). CCA has a pretty good track record here – 11 out of 14 (and nine of the last ten) have matched with Oscar. BAFTA is a bit less impressive, lining up only ten times in the past 23 years (and six of the last ten). What makes me lean in favor of Poor Things is not just what I mentioned in Costume Design, but the ADG stat: of the past 23 ADG winners, 16 have gone on to win the Oscar (and nine of the last ten). While Barbie bested Poor Things when they went head-to-head at CCA, Poor Things prevailed at BAFTA and ADG when the pair duked it out. BAFTA and ADG have Oscar overlap, while CCA does not.
Fun Fact: The film with the most overall nominations has won this Oscar 12 times in the last 23 years. The ADG winner for Period Film has won the Oscar six of the last 13 years. The film that has both of those attributes? Oppenheimer.
Sound
Will Win: Oppenheimer (Willie Burton, Richard King, Gary A. Rizzo and Kevin O’Connell)
Could Win: The Zone of Interest (Tarn Willers and Johnnie Burn)
Should Win: Oppenheimer
Stats/Analysis: Sound was always a tricky field. For obvious reasons, the category didn’t exist in the first two years of the Oscars. With the expansion of “talkies,” the Sound award was created for the third Oscars (1929/1930) as one category – Sound Recording. While the amount of nominees would fluctuate over the years, Sound Recording stood for 29 Oscars. In 1958, the category changed to Sound (it’s cleaner). This lasted five ceremonies before the Academy introduced a second Sound category: Sound Effects. Again, this lasted only five years before the Academy retracted the new category and went back to one award: Sound. Fifteen years later, Sound Effects Editing would be partnered up with Sound, and the two awards were given out for the next 19 years (give or take two years in that stretch where they went with just Sound). In 2003, Sound became Sound Mixing, and Mixing and Editing awards were given out for 17 years. In 2020, we went back to one award for Sound. All this to say, we don’t have a lot of data when it comes to just one category. For many years, Sound Editing was looked at like a special effects award for sound. Big, loud films (often action and war movies) won this award – The Incredibles, Letters from Iwo Jima, The Dark Knight, Zero Dark Thirty, American Sniper… you get the picture. If we still had Sound Editing, I’d predict Oppenheimer here.
Sound Mixing, on the other hand, often went to films where dialogue needed to be adjusted amongst other sounds, and often musicals or films with heavy amounts of music won – Ray, Dreamgirls, Les Misérables, Whiplash, Sound of Metal, etc. A film like Maestro might have won, or maybe The Zone of Interest, where sound is a key player in the background to the dialogue. I might have predicted The Zone of Interest for Mixing, if not Oppy for the double win.
But here we are with one category, and only three years of recent data to point us in the right direction. To make matters worse, the Sound Mixers Guild (CAS) and Sound Editors Guild (MPSE) did not announce their winners (Oppenheimer for both) until four and five days after Oscar voting ended, respectively. So that might make BAFTA the most important precursor this year. The Brits went for their film – The Zone of Interest. While the BAFTA prize is a nice win to keep things close, I believe Oppenheimer will prevail at the Oscars based on three factors: 1) Zone did not receive a CAS nomination (in the three years since Oscar merged their two sound categories into one, BAFTA and MPSE have matched Oscar twice, while CAS has matched all three years); 2) while Zone received a MPSE nom, they did not receive a nod in the Sound Effects and Foley for Feature Film category. That MPSE category’s winner has matched 15 times in 23 years with one of the Oscar Sound winners; and 3) in the last 12 years, at least one of the two sound winners was also nominated for Editing. Nine of those years, the Editing winner also matched one or both Sound winners. While Zone is 0-3 with these important precursors, Oppy won CAS, won that important MPSE category, and is nominated for Editing (which it will likely win).
Oscar Pool Winners
Animated Short Film
Will Win: War Is Over! Inspired by the Music of John & Yoko
Could Win: Ninety-Five Senses (or any of the five)
Should Win: Humo (Smoke) (not nominated)
Stats/Analysis: When it comes to the Shorts, my best advice is go with the one you like the most. There is no data or analysis. Go with God.
Fun Fact: I think all three short categories should be merged into one to create room for the new Casting category as well as a Stunt Ensemble Oscar.
Documentary Short Subject Film
Will Win: The Last Repair Shop
Could Win: The ABCs of Book Banning (or any of the five)
Should Win: Deciding Vote (not nominated)
Stats/Analysis: None
Fun Fact: Another option would be take the shorts completely out of Oscar night (no one is watching the Oscars for these categories, except our beloved Joey Moser, maybe). Move them to the Governors Awards evening.
Live Action Short Film
Will Win: The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar
Could Win: The After (or any of the five)
Should Win: Invincible
Stats/Analysis: None
Fun Fact: Along with moving them to the Governors Awards, AMPAS should install some better rules for eligibility. The Shorts should be for students and filmmakers trying to grow in the industry. I think it defeats the point of this category when big stars and directors are being nominated here. Case in point, if Henry Sugar wins, Wes Anderson’s Oscar will be for a Short Film. Doesn’t seem right, in my opinion.
Adapted Screenplay
Will Win: Cord Jefferson (American Fiction)
Could Win: Christopher Nolan (Oppenheimer)
Should Win: Either one of those two would be a terrific winner.
Stats/Analysis: I long thought Oppy would take this category in its massive sweep of the 96th Academy Awards. Then I noticed a pattern: Oppenheimer won Picture and Director at the Globes, but lost Screenplay to Anatomy of a Fall. Oppenheimer won Picture and Director at CCA, but lost Adapted Screenplay to American Fiction. Oppenheimer won Picture and Director at BAFTA, but lost Adapted Screenplay to American Fiction. This trio of precursors was telling us the same thing: awards groups like to spread the wealth, where possible. This is likely the only category that American Fiction can win, so might voters want to reward one of the best films of the year here? Along with winning CCA and BAFTA, American Fiction won the Scripter, a precursor that overwhelmingly predicted this Oscar for eight years from 2010-2017. The pair matched up eight-for-eight before hitting a rough stretch of inconsistency. Since 2017, only one of five Scripter winners won at Oscar – last year’s Women Talking, which many saw coming in a heated race last year. I went out on a limb and predicted All Quiet on the Western Front thanks to its BAFTA win. Coming into last year, BAFTA was on the longest streak of forecasting Adapted Screenplay, matching five winners in a row. Without a WGA winner to help guide us, I am betting on American Fiction. For those who think Oppy will be sweep, you might want to go all-in with it here as well.
Lead Actress
Will Win: Lily Gladstone (Killers of the Flower Moon)
Could Win: Emma Stone (Poor Things) or Sandra Hüller (Anatomy of a Fall)
Should Win: Carey Mulligan (Maestro)
Stats/Analysis: This is mostly a race between Gladstone and Stone, who split the Globe prizes for Drama and Comedy/Musical, respectively. Lily has SAG and Emma has CCA and BAFTA. In their 28-year history, the four SAG winners matched 100% with the Acting Oscar-winners nine times (including three of the last four years). By taking Da’Vine, Downey Jr., Murphy, and Lily, I am betting on another SAG sweep this year. This is such a nail-biter, but I think in the end AMPAS will want to create a historic moment, and crown Gladstone as the first Native American woman to win an Academy Award.
Fun Fact: The case for Sandra Hüller is a little more difficult. Until Frances McDormand (Nomadland) won Lead Actress in 2020, this category lined up with either the SAG or Globes Lead Actress winner all the way back to 1985. Before McDormand, the last to win the Oscar without first winning either Globe or SAG was Geraldine Page, who won the Lead Actress Oscar in 1985 for The Trip to Bountiful. SAG wasn’t around yet and the Globe went to Whoopi Goldberg (The Color Purple) for Drama and Kathleen Turner (Prizzi’s Honor) for Comedy.
Original Song
Will Win: “What Was I Made For?” by Billie Eilish, Finneas O’Connell (Barbie)
Could Win: “I’m Just Ken” by Mark Ronson, Andrew Wyatt (Barbie)
Should Win: “I Am” by Stan Walker (Origin), not nominated.
Stats/Analysis: I think we can all agree its between the two Barbie songs, and, had it not been for an Academy rule prohibiting three songs from the same film being nominated, I think Dua Lipa’s “Dance the Night” would have been in third place. Between the two nominated Barbie songs, though? I genuinely have no idea which way to lean. “I’m Just Ken” is the best sequence in the entire film, and reminds me of recent upbeat and fun winners like RRR’s “Naatu Naatu” and The Muppet’s “Man or Muppet.” But “What Was I Made For?” is more of a traditional winner, with its composition woven into the film’s score. We saw this with several past winners, including Billie and Finneas’ previous Oscar win for “No Time to Die.” The Globe winner (“What Was I Made For?”) has won the Oscar 11 times in the past 23 years, and seven of the past nine. The CCA winner (“I’m Just Ken”) has won 12 times in the last 23 years, and seven of the past nine. Flip a coin.
Makeup and Hairstyling
Will Win: Maestro (Kazu Hiro, Kay Georgiou and Lori McCoy-Bell)
Could Win: Poor Things (Nadia Stacey, Mark Coulier and Josh Weston)
Should Win: Maestro
Stats/Analysis: Since its inception in 1999, the Makeup and Hairstyling Guild (MUAH) has handed out awards in 15 years. They took a strange hiatus from 2004-2012. One of the winners in their three categories – Contemporary, Period, and Special Make-up Effects – has won the Oscar 12 times in those 15 years. In the ten years since it returned in 2013, only one Oscar-winner for Hair and Makeup did not precede its victory with a prize at MUAH – The Eyes of Tammy Faye (2021). Maestro is the only Oscar nominee that won at MUAH. Also since 2013, BAFTA has matched Oscar 6/10, missing Dallas Buyers Club (American Hustle), Suicide Squad (Florence Foster Jenkins), Vice (The Favourite), and The Whale (Elvis). Poor Things won this award. The recent trend shows that the Oscar-winning film for Hair and Makeup also has an interesting alignment in the acting nominees. If you look at the last six winners, they all had a central character doused in makeup that was also nominated for an Oscar. Three of those times, the actor with makeup/prosthetics won. In Maestro, the main character with makeup is Bradley Cooper, who is nominated. In Poor Things, Willem Dafoe has the “most” makeup, and is not nominated. I’m grasping at straws here, I know. But what else can you do in such a tight race? I’ll stick with Maestro in one of the hardest to predict awards of the night.
Visual Effects
Will Win: The Creator (Jay Cooper, Ian Comley, Andrew Roberts and Neil Corbould)
Could Win: Godzilla Minus One (Takashi Yamazaki, Kiyoko Shibuya, Masaki Takahashi and Tatsuji Nojima) or Napoleon (Charley Henley, Luc-Ewen Martin-Fenouillet, Simone Coco and Neil Corbould)
Should Win: Oppenheimer (not nominated)
Stats/Analysis: When Oppenheimer failed to make the Visual Effects shortlist, we knew this race was about to get weird. But I don’t think any of us anticipated such a clusterfuck of a contest. This year’s Visual Effects category is a race where entropy reigns supreme. It is the single hardest category to call on the night, bar none. First off, none of the nominees come from Best Picture-nominated films. Even just ONE Best Picture nom in this field would have helped. Years ago, Kris Tapley (of In Contention, at the time) called out a great stat: Before Ex Machina’s win in 2015, you have to go all the way back to 1970 to find the last time a non-Best Picture nominee beat a Best Picture nominee in this category (when Tora! Tora! Tora! beat Patton). Impressive. Other precursors we could look at include BAFTA, where 15 of their last 18 winners matched Oscar. But that doesn’t help us this year since Poor Things won the BAFTA and the Visual Effects branch chose not to nominate the film. Maybe CCA can help, where eight out of 14 winners have overlapped. CCA went with Oppenheimer, which, as I mentioned above, failed to even make the shortlist. A puzzling category for sure, so let’s breakdown the chances for the top three contenders listed above.
The case for Napoleon – All five nominees have VES nominations. All but Godzilla have BAFTA nods. But only one has the coveted Production Design connection that I made famous across the interwebs about a decade ago, and that’s Napoleon: 20 out of the last 23 Visual Effects winners were also nominated for Art Direction/Production Design. The three exceptions were Spider-Man 2 (2004), Ex Machina (2015), and The Jungle Book (2016). So if you love that stat religiously, Napoleon would be the way to go.
The case for Godzilla Minus One – Godzilla missed with BAFTA and CCA nominations, and while nominated by VES, Godzilla did not get nominated in their most important category: Outstanding Visual Effects in a Photoreal Feature. Godzilla’s only VES nomination was a minor one, in fact: Outstanding Animated Character in a Photoreal Feature. So what, exactly, are the people betting on Godzilla basing their prediction on? Passion voting. Godzilla has a pretty big fanbase already, and this latest installment in the franchise had incredible scores with both critics and audiences (98% in both categories at Rotten Tomatoes). It would be, however, unprecedented for a film without a Visual Effects nomination from BAFTA, CCA, nor VES (Outstanding Visual Effects in an Effects Driven Motion Picture/Photoreal Feature) to win the Oscar. Since all three have been handing out awards (CCA began awarding Visual Effects in 2009), no film has done so. Even before that, when it was just BAFTA and VES, no film has won Oscar without BAFTA or that VES nomination going back to the beginning of VES awards in 2002. BAFTA started recognizing this achievement in 1982. From 1982-2001, it was the only major group awarding Visual Effects, and all but their 2000 and 2001 prizes came AFTER the Oscars. Both years that BAFTA came before the Oscars, the Oscar-winner was nominated at BAFTA. Godzilla’s win would be historic.
The case for The Creator – The Creator and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 were the only two Oscar-nominated films that also received VES’ main prize nomination. The Creator was not only nominated, it also won the award. That gives it a significant boost, in my opinion. Aside from that VES prize, The Creator and MI: Dead Reckoning are the only Effects nominees with corresponding Sound nods. In the last 15 years, 12 Oscar-winners for Visual Effects also had Sound nominations. It also passes the eye test – in other words it’s the film with the MOST Effects (along with Guardians). I had to watch a short video to see all the incredible work that went into Napoleon, and Godzilla has just the creature (for the most part). VES… Sound Nom… Eye test… why does this not feel like an easy call?
And that, as they say, is that. I loved the 2023 film year and the awards race (as one often does when their favorite film dominates like Oppy did), but I am ready for the big show and to start talking about 2024. What? It’s never too early to start… right? RIGHT?!!?
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