2025 Oscars: Can a Late-Breaker Still Win Best Picture? [POLL]

In the Oscar race, there are no rules that can’t or won’t be broken. Just when you thing there is one, some movie breaks it.

Everything, Everywhere All At Once became the first movie to win three acting awards plus Best Picture and Director.

Oppenheimer became the first film since Gladiator to be a blockbuster and win Actor and Picture (both The King’s Speech and The Artist won Picture/director but they were not blockbusters).

CODA was the first streamer. It also won with only three nominations: Picture, Supporting Actor and Screenplay and won all three.

Parasite became the first “International Feature” to win.

And all of that before you get to the history-making “firsts” that involve identity – first woman, etc.

But the one stat I’ve been waiting to see broken is the late-breaker stat, which says that no film released late in the year has won Best Picture since the Academy moved the date of Oscar Night to mid-March.

I don’t mean that the film was released in November or December. In this Oscar race as it is now, it doesn’t much matter what happens after the film is released. It has absolutely no impact on whether a film can win Best Picture or not. Oppenheimer’s win last year was either a one-off or a sign that Hollywood was ready to fight back and they want to make the Oscars BIG again. But the trend has been the opposite, with the Oscar race existing in its own niche universe. In that universe, film festivals are where the films are seen, discussed and placed on lists. Those lists then often influence or decide the nominations.

The problem with taking the public completely out of it is that the tastemakers — people like me and others — are deciding a film’s worth by whether or not it will “fit” the tastes of 10,000 Oscar voters. That’s the problem. We used to have films open to the public and let their buzz build organically, as a way to determine which would be nominated for the Oscars. Absolutely no doubt in my mind that this was a far better approach to where we are now, where a movie like CODA can be nominated and win without a theatrical release at all and the public never sees it.

Of course, CODA might have been the kind of film that could be released and then gain enough buzz to warrant giving it the Best Picture prize, but only an idiot would look at the Oscars and say that CODA should have won the coveted title of Best Picture of the Year.

Don’t believe me? Look at the history. In bold are the films that I call “late breakers,” films released in November and December (but didn’t have their worth decided first at film festivals).  And not in bold are the titles that were released earlier in the year, whether at film festivals or direct release.

Here is the list:

2023-Oppenheimer – general release, July
2022-Everything Everywhere – March
2021-CODA – January
2020-Nomadland – September
2019-Parasite – May (October)
2018-Green Book – September (November)
2017-The Shape of Water – September (December)
2016-Moonlight – September (October)
2015-Spotlight– September (November)
2014-Birdman – September (October)
2013-12 Years a Slave– September (October)
2012-Argo – September (October)
2011-The Artist – May (November)
2010-The King’s Speech – September (November)
2009-The Hurt Locker – September 2008 (June 2009)
2008-Slumdog Millionaire – September  (November)
2007-No Country for Old Men – May (November
2006-The Departed – September
2005-Crash – Toronto
2004-Million Dollar Baby — December
2003-ROTK – December
2002-December
2001-A Beautiful Mind, December
2000-Gladiator, May
1999-American Beauty, September
1998-Shakespeare in Love, December 
1997-Titanic, December
1996-The English Patient, November
1995-Braveheart, May
1994-Forrest Gump, June 23 
1993-Schindler’s List, December
1992-Unforgiven, August
1991-Silence of the Lambs, February
1990-Dances with Wolves, December
1989-Driving Miss Daisy, December
1988-Rain Man, December
1987-The Last Emperor, December
1986-Platoon, December
1985-Out of Africa, December
1984-Amadeus, September
1983-Terms of Endearment, November
1982-Gandhi, November
1981-Chariots of Fire, October
1980-Ordinary People, September
1979-Kramer vs. Kramer, December
1978-The Deer Hunter, December
1977-Annie Hall, March
1976-Rocky, November
1975-One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, November
1974-The Godfather II, December
1973-The Sting, December
1972-The Godfather, March
1971-The French Connection, October
1970-Patton, April
1969-Midnight Cowboy, May
1968-Oliver! September
1967-In the Heat of the Night, August
1966-A Man for All Seasons, December
1965-The Sound of Music, March
1964-My Fair Lady, October
1963-Tom Jones, June
1962-Lawrence of Arabia, December
1961-West Side Story, October
1960-The Apartment, June
1959-Ben-Hur, November
1958-Gigi, May
1957-The Bridge on the River Kwai, December
1956-Around the World in 80 Days, October
1955-Marty, April
1954-On the Waterfront, July
1953-From Here to Eternity, August
1952-The Greatest Show on Earth, January
1951-An American in Paris, October
1950-All About Eve, October
1949-All the King’s Men, November
1948-Hamlet, May
1947-Gentleman’s Agreement, November
1946-The Best Years of Our Lives, November
1945-The Lost Weekend, November
1944-Going My Way, May
1943-Casablanca, November
1942-Mrs. Miniver, June
1941-How Green Was My Valley, October
1940-Rebecca, March
1939-Gone with the Wind, December
1938-You Can’t Take it With You, September
1937-The Life of Emile Zola, August
1936-The Great Ziegfeld, March
1935-Mutiny on the Bounty, November
1934-It Happened One Night, February
1933-Cavalcade, April
1932-Grand Hotel, April
1931-Cimarron, January
1930-All Quiet on the Western Front, April
1929-Broadway Melody, February
1928-Wings, August

As you can see, the strongest surge for the late-breaker model happened at the end of the 1970s and through the 1980s and 1990s.

Prior to that era, the Best Picture nominees had to be battle-tested. They had to be films that meant something to our collective experience. It wasn’t that they included everyone, of course, certainly not the minority groups in the country. But the majority population were moved enough by a film that it was memorable enough that we can still recite lines like “I’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse.”

They were deeply rooted in American life. Even a film like From Here to Eternity, which no young person would know about today, made a deep impact on the culture. That is especially true at the end of the film when the footage of Pearl Harbor is shown. The movie itself is great, of course.  But it was that ending that won the film Best Picture.

Competition from television and home video rentals have forced Hollywood to change course in American cinema history. Years ago, movies were released late, gained buzz after their release, and got a box-office boost after they were nominated for or won Oscars.

That remained true for decades, until recently. We’re living through a moment where being an Oscar nominee for Best Picture barely registers with much of the general public. My daughter and her generation see the Oscars as a remote planet in the sea of content, but one that doesn’t interest them much. She said they used to watch the Oscars way back when – say, ten years ago or so, but lately, there is zero interest in them.

And that makes me sad. I never wanted to see the Oscars turn into the Tonys. I think they still have more cultural relevance than the Tonys but it’s getting close. That is what happens when the public is cut out of the equation.

Now, we have Gladiator II as probably our last best hope for a prestige blockbuster this year. It doesn’t look like any of the other late-breakers can topple the already-placed frontrunners – Here, Juror #2, Wicked. A Gladiator win would be along the lines of Oppenheimer, but even more so, because it’s a legendary director returning to a career peak all of these years later for another slam dunk. How great would that be?

I know Gladiator will make bank. Ridley Scott is smart enough, and old enough, to understand the basics: give the people what they want and the people will come. Hollywood doesn’t do that anymore. They give the people what they think they SHOULD want, to help coax them into thinking a certain way. And that has been toxic to Hollywood. Audiences mostly stay away if they think they’re about to get ‘WOKED.’

Working against Ridley Scott and Gladiator II is us. The hive mind. The tastemakers. The critics. The tiny little bubble that has taken complete control of the Oscars. That is the only thing standing in the way of another blockbuster taking the prize.

But let’s put it to you all. How about a poll? What movie do you think has the best shot of winning Best Picture?

[poll id=”88″]