Every week between now and January 23, when the nominations for the Academy Awards are announced, Vulture will consult its crystal ball to determine the changing fortunes in this year’s Oscars race. In our “Oscar Futures†column, we’ll let you in on insider gossip, parse brand-new developments, and track industry buzz to figure out who’s up, who’s down, and who’s currently leading the race for a coveted Oscar nomination.
Best Picture
Oppenheimer
I would love to tell you that we’re in for two more months of thrilling horse-race action in the Best Picture race. In truth, Oppenheimer will head into Tuesday’s Oscar nominations as the most dominant front-runner we’ve seen in some time, a title underlined by its eight wins at last weekend’s Critics’ Choice Awards and 13 nods at Thursday’s BAFTA nominations. It would take the mother of all upsets — or some outside event unexpectedly shifting the tenor of the season, as Donald Trump’s inauguration did in 2017 — for that to change. For now, everyone else in the race must learn to stop worrying and love the bomb.
Saltburn
What do BAFTA voters have in common with Alison Roman? They both love Fennell! Saltburn made the most of its home-field advantage, scoring five BAFTA nominations, including Barry Keoghan in Actor, Rosamund Pike in Supporting Actress, and Jacob Elordi in Supporting Actor. I’ve been skeptical of the film’s awards chances, in part because it’s almost universally despised among the people I talk to, but perhaps that’s my bubble. Among the Brits, there is a thirst for Saltburn, which might be strong enough to power the indie-sleaze thriller to unexpected nominations. Could it earn a surprise berth in Supporting Actress or Original Screenplay?
Current Predix
American Fiction, Anatomy of a Fall, Barbie, The Holdovers, Killers of the Flower Moon, Maestro, Oppenheimer, Past Lives, Poor Things, The Zone of Interest
Best Director
Jonathan Glazer, The Zone of Interest
Which European director will receive the now-customary fifth Best Director spot: British bad boy Jonathan Glazer or Cannes doyenne Justine Triet? Both Glazer’s Zone of Interest and Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall look set for Best Picture nominations, and while Anatomy may be a mite stronger overall, Zone fits the Zeitgeist of a somber awards season where everyone on the red carpet seems to be in black. I’ve started to entertain the possibility of Glazer and Triet each getting in, at the expense of …
Greta Gerwig, Barbie
You can imagine what the vibe on the internet will be like if Greta Gerwig doesn’t get a Best Director nomination, so gird your loins: There is a chance this branch will join last year’s nominee Ruben Östlund in considering Barbie less a feat of art than of marketing. The close of Oscar voting brought warning sirens from Clayton Davis and Mark Harris that Gerwig might miss, and the summer blockbuster’s underperformance at BAFTA, where it was left out of Best Director and Best Film, suggests there is indeed cause for concern. On the bright side for Team Barbie, its Best Picture hopes rest on positioning itself as an underdog, and painful as it would be, an eye-catching directing snub could help make that case.
Current Predix
Jonathan Glazer, The Zone of Interest; Yorgos Lanthimos, Poor Things; Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer; Martin Scorsese, Killers of the Flower Moon; Justine Triet, Anatomy of a Fall
Best Actor
Paul Giamatti, The Holdovers
Giamatti kicked off his Critics’ Choice acceptance speech with a reference to his viral cheeseburger, so it’s worth asking this: Did that trip to In-N-Out make his chances go up, up, up? While the moment did underscore his regular-guy bona fides, it was merely the cherry atop a pair of sweet Sundays for the Holdovers star, his Globes and Critics’ Choice wins sandwiching a Best Actor honor at the National Board of Review gala last week. While these voting bodies have little overlap with the Academy, they’ve given Giamatti a jolt of momentum in the closing stage of Phase One. He has seized his moment with gusto, delivering a string of heartfelt speeches that should have Oscar voters wondering if now is the time to give the veteran his long-awaited trophy.
Andrew Scott, All of Us Strangers
Throughout the fall, Strangers fans whispered a comforting litany: Wait until BAFTA, wait until BAFTA. Well, BAFTA finally came, and though All of Us Strangers did very well overall, Scott was nowhere to be found in Best Actor. The process through which the Brits choose their acting nominees is nearly impossible to explain concisely — the top-three vote-getters earn automatic nominations; the next four are added to a longlist; a longlist jury then adds three to the longlist from those that placed eighth through 15th; finally, a nominating jury picks three of the seven from the longlist, creating a field of six nominees — but the conclusion is simple: If Scott can’t get in at his film’s hometown awards, he’s probably not getting in with Oscar. The final spot in Best Actor now looks like a dead sprint between Leonardo DiCaprio and Colman Domingo.
Current Predix
Bradley Cooper, Maestro; Leonardo DiCaprio, Killers of the Flower Moon; Paul Giamatti, The Holdovers; Cillian Murphy, Oppenheimer; Jeffrey Wright, American Fiction
Best Actress
Lily Gladstone, Killers of the Flower Moon
Killers did well at the BAFTA longlists, even scoring a deserved supporting place for Cara Jade Myers. But the film suffered key blanks at the actual nominations, missing Actor, Actress, and Director. This suggests affection for Scorsese’s western ran wide but not deep among the Blighty contingent, consistent with their history of only embracing films about America’s racial ills when they’re directed by Brits. The BAFTAs’ status as an influential Oscar precursor is in flux, as they’ve recently preferred to forge their own path. Nevertheless, they still feature a substantial overlap with the Academy, and Gladstone not finishing in their top three is a tough break for the assumed Best Actress front-runner.
Emma Stone, Poor Things
With Gladstone out at BAFTA, her biggest rival now looks set for a spotlight moment on the eve of Phase Two voting. (Unless the Brits decide to get crazy with it and award someone like Sandra Hüller.) Stone edged Gladstone at Critics’ Choice, and while she may be dinged for having won before, she also sports some key advantages: Namely, she’s the primary driver of the plot, while also undergoing a radical transformation, in a film that’s all about female empowerment. Whomever you favor, this race will be a nail-biter.
Current Predix
Lily Gladstone, Killers of the Flower Moon; Sandra Hüller, Anatomy of a Fall; Carey Mulligan, Maestro; Margot Robbie, Barbie; Emma Stone, Poor Things
Best Supporting Actor
Dominic Sessa, The Holdovers
If we grant that Giamatti and Da’Vine Joy Randolph are the front-runners in their respective categories, might the third member of the Holdovers trio be able to snag a nomination, too? He did at BAFTA, and were he to follow it up at the Oscars, the 21-year-old Sessa would be the youngest acting nominee since Lucas Hedges in Manchester by the Sea. Still, he’s working against the same law of awards-season gravity currently holding down Charles Melton — namely, that voters in this category are more apt to recognize an old-timer over a fresh face.
Willem Dafoe, Poor Things
At the start of the season, Poor Things looked liable to score double noms for its pair of Supporting Actor contenders. Here we are in January, though, and Mark Ruffalo and Willem Dafoe haven’t appeared together since the Globes. Ruffalo made it in at Critics’ Choice, Dafoe at SAG, and BAFTA went without either of them. Clearly votes are getting split, and though you have to figure one of them will still crack the Oscar lineup, who will it be? I’m leaning toward Dafoe, in recognition of the Academy’s recent preference for father figures in this category. While he’s not as cuddly as Ciarán Hinds, Troy Kotsur, or Ke Huy Quan, he’s ultimately working in a more heartwarming register than Ruffalo.
Current Predix
Willem Dafoe, Poor Things; Robert De Niro, Killers of the Flower Moon; Robert Downey Jr., Oppenheimer; Ryan Gosling, Barbie; Charles Melton, May December
Best Supporting Actress
Sandra Hüller, The Zone of Interest
If you wanted to predict an actor who’d unexpectedly appear on Oscar-nomination morning, you’d start by looking at people from Best Picture nominees. Ideally they’d be riding the coattails of another nominated performance, like Jesse Plemons in Power of the Dog. Maybe they’d be the public face of their film, like Marina de Tavira of Roma, and maybe they’d be from an artsy Foreign Language contender, also like Marina de Tavira of Roma. Put it all together, and that looks like a lot like Sandra Hüller. The German actress could draft off her own Lead Actress campaign to score two nominations in the same year — a feat last pulled off by Scarlett Johansson, who in a weird bit of Oscar symmetry also got her Supporting nod for playing a German hausfrau in World War II. The only thing preventing this from being my predicted Tuesday morning surprise? The fact that Hüller managed this exact feat at BAFTA, making it not much of a surprise anymore.
Jodie Foster, Nyad
Netflix called a post-TIFF audible, making Foster’s straight-shooting audience surrogate the face of the Nyad campaign. That early-season move paid dividends as Foster became a stalwart of precursor lineups, but unfortunately, her nomination streak came to an end at BAFTA. The performance is winning enough that I still think Foster’s got a shot at making the Oscar five, especially as her starring role in the new season of True Detective should keep her front of mind for voters. But a lone Supporting contender from a film that wasn’t critically admired is never going to feel secure until their name is read aloud.
Current Predix
Emily Blunt, Oppenheimer; Danielle Brooks, The Color Purple; Jodie Foster, Nyad; Sandra Hüller, The Zone of Interest; Da’Vine Joy Randolph, The Holdovers
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