2025 Oscar Predictions – When the Emmys Thrive and the Oscars Struggle

Already, it’s shaping up to be a rough year for the Oscar race but yet another great year for the Emmys. There are so many strong offerings on the television side of things. It’s hard not to look around at the diminished box office, the creative stagnation on the big screen, and the absolute explosion of creativity on the small screen and conclude that movies are just over.

They had a great run. I got to live through the best era of American film we’ll ever know. So far, nearly everything that appears to be in consideration this year for the Best Picture race, per the pundits, are movies that either could have easily been on streaming (and will be) or highly anticipated films made for the big screen that have disappointed on some level. Either they turned out to be not very good or they didn’t make money.

The truth of it is that the Oscar industry is one of the primary reasons why Oscar movies even exist now. They have no market beyond the circuit — film festivals, award shows, the odd screening here or there — the stamp of quality that ultimately puts them in the “prestige pic” category on Netflix or Amazon. There are many factors contributing to this state of affairs. We can pick our favorite excuse and blame it, or we can accept that times have changed and they aren’t changing back anytime soon.

What has me most excited this year, so far, is on the Emmy side of things, specifically Ripley on Netflix and The Curse on Paramount+. They are both so good they reminded me that yes, great writing and great directing do still exist. Streaming is such a big universe that it’s possible to do everything Hollywood wants to do. They can re-order the power hierarchy to give “marginalized groups” more prominence without losing too much on the backend. And they can experiment with shows like The Curse that slice right through the pretense of the modern day Left — and even if it isn’t top of mind for the chattering class that covers entertainment, it’s GOOD. Really really good.

Most of the movies that the awards coverage industry will push into the race for Best Picture are going to be movies that would be fine released on streaming and, in fact, won’t make money when released in theaters to qualify. The Academy is trying to fix the problem by requiring that movies must meet minimal requirements for a theatrical release. Still, the Oscars also helped create the problem with their inclusivity mandate, which has tarnished their reputation and the entire industry’s reputation with the public. However good the intentions may be, most people can see the unseen hands trying to even the score every time they sit down to watch a movie. It’s always there somewhere, and it’s easy to spot.

The movies earmarked for bigger box office, like Horizon or Furiosa, are movies made for the biggest screens possible in movie theaters, but the Academy seems to have turned its back on such films. As a result, many of the films in the Best Picture slate have now shrunk down to Emmy size stories — because, again, these aren’t the popular MOVIE movies that the chattering class is likely to hand-pick for Oscar voters.

It’s easy for anyone who now covers the Oscars to echo the same opinions as those who drive the consensus among awards pundits. In the arena of “nobody knows anything,” most of them do seem to think they know. They believe they know what’s what because the movies they all like are the movies that end up being nominated for Best Picture, and because the offerings are so sparse now, it’s not hard to spot the likely Best Picture Ten.

So yes, in a time of a shrinking product, the Academy should reduce Best Picture to five to make it more interesting and more competitive. That is the one thing they could do right now to improve the entire Oscar race. Choosing ten is easy. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel. Choosing five, however, now you are really talking about a competition for best.

We live in a time when no one remembers what won Best Picture in a given year, let alone what was nominated. That might have always been true, but for most of the Oscars’ history, the movies chosen for Best Picture were at least movies everyone had heard about. Hollywood or the Oscars should not give up that cultural influence so easily. They should still be reaching for that very high bar of expansive reach of their films and their film awards.

And yes, I realize I am spitting in the wind here. I might be old but I’m not stupid (okay, I might be a little stupid). I can see the writing on the wall. I know where this is all going. Even if you factor in the ill-timed strike that brought Hollywood to its knees for months on end, which has created yet another desert for the film industry, there are other stressers in play too.

The same thing happening to Hollywood is happening across the board in American culture. The empire is collapsing. The Washington Post, the New York Times, the Democratic Party, television ratings, box office — it’s all one in the same malaise. It relies on a group of people who have mostly become an insular bubble. That has caused an explosion of creativity in a different direction, with competitive media — especially TikTok and YouTube, which are creator and algorithm-driven. They don’t have activists walking around with clipboards to make sure all are in compliance. They offer pure entertainment — hard truths, funny jokes, controversial ideas. They give us everything Hollywood no longer can because Hollywood has become too political.

With only five nominees, the competition for Best Picture would be fierce and it would start right now. With ten, it’s more of an easy slide into the season. It’s like loading up your plate with healthy options because they are so readily available. Here is how Best Picture looks right now at our pal Erik Anderson’s site, AwardsWatch, as of June 6:

BEST PICTURE

1. Conclave (Focus Features) – 11/8
2. Anora (Neon) – 10/18
3. Dune Part II (Warner Bros) – 3/1
4. Emilia Pérez (Netflix) – date TBA
5. Blitz (Apple Original Films) – date TBA
6. Sing Sing (A24) – 7/12
7. The Nickel Boys (Amazon MGM) – 10/25
8. Queer (TBA) – date TBA
9. A Real Pain (Searchlight Pictures) – 10/18
10. We Live in Time (A24) – 10/11

Next up:

• Challengers (Amazon MGM) – 4/26
• Gladiator II (Paramount Pictures) – 11/22
• Hard Truths (Bleecker Street) – 10/18
• Hedda (Amazon MGM) – date TBA
• Joker: Folie à Deux (Warner Bros) – 10/4
• Juror #2 (Warner Bros) – date TBA
• Kinds of Kindness (Searchlight Pictures) – 6/28
• Maria (TBA) – date TBA
• Nightbitch (Searchlight Pictures) – 12/6
• The Piano Lesson (Netflix) – 7/26
• The Room Next Door (Sony Pictures Classics) – date TBA
• The End (Neon) – date TBA
• Wicked Part I (Universal Pictures) – 11/27

Most of you looking at this list will know these movies because you follow Oscar sites or you followed the Cannes coverage. I look at it and think, it can’t go this way. It just can’t. My list will look very different from this — maybe one of the 10 Erik has chose should get in, maybe two. His “next up” looks more promising to me. I would go something like this for my predicted ten this early out:

1. Joker: Folie à Deux
2. Gladiator II
3. Blitz
4. Wicked Part I
5. Here
6. Dune II
7. Conclave
8. Hard Truths
9. The Piano Lesson
10. Sing Sing
11. Juror #2
12. Horizon Chapter 1 & 2 (I am not giving up on Kevin Costner’s epic just yet)
13. Anora
14. A Real Pain
15. Wolfs
16. Queer
17. The Nickel Boys
18. Emilia Pérez
19. Kinds of Kindness
20. Maria

The awards community should also consider films outside their comfort zone if they do really well at the box office, like the film Reagan, for instance. I would urge everyone to think in expansive terms — go bigger, not smaller. Think more broadly, not more insular. Try hard not to suck the Oscars into the teeny tiny bubble Hollywood has become.

Things may get better next year. Now that the strike has ended, there are surely a number of great scripts and great talent eager to make those movies that got put on hold. I hope so. The Oscars only matter if they matter outside of the circle of film critics and film festivals. They only matter if they reflect a moment in our history that is lived by real people, not films that reflect the ideology of a small group of people. After 25 years of watching the Oscars, I have to hold out hope that all is not lost.