Last year, Hollywood shut down for months during the Writers Guild and Screen Actors Guild strikes. At least 30 films were paused in the middle of production, while dozens more never got started. Now the industry is reaping the consequences. In 2024, there are simply fewer movies in theaters than there used to be. Fewer summer blockbusters, fewer indie sensations, and, soon, fewer fall awards movies.
I don’t know what that means for the future of the industry. But I do know what it means for the 2025 Oscars: We’re in for the most wide-open awards season in years. In the past two seasons, we’d already seen the eventual Best Picture winner by Labor Day. This year, there’s no Everything Everywhere All at Once or Oppenheimer waiting in the wings. And we can’t wait for any of the venerated American masters to save us — there’s no Scorsese, no Spielberg, no Tarantino. Which means that, once again, the Oscars will feel like a proper race. Anyone can triumph. Anyone can stumble. Sometime in the next few months, you are going to find yourself arguing about a Netflix trans-empowerment musical, a strip-club screwball comedy, a gripping drama about popes, or a three-and-a-half hour biopic of a fictional architect. I don’t remember an awards season with this many unknowns, and personally, I can’t wait for the chaos.
Now that the Venice, Telluride, and Toronto film festivals are in the books and New York is about to wrap up, it’s time to take stock of the emerging field. I’ll be guiding you through the next five months of ups and downs in Vulture’s weekly Oscar Futures column, as well as in our Gold Rush newsletter. We’ll begin our coverage with an extremely early, highly speculative overview of the six biggest races.
In Picture and Director, Few Sure Bets
This year feels more open than most in part because the first nine months were not stuffed with Oscar heavyweights. I think there’s only one surefire Best Picture nominee in the bunch: Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Two, which looks primed to rack up the craft nominations and could earn the Québécois filmmaker the directing nomination that eluded him on Part One. However, as with the Lord of the Rings trilogy, any above-the-line love will likely have to wait until the series wraps up. There may be room for Greg Kwedar’s Sing Sing, a heart-tugger about a prison theater group: Though it may not have been the sleeper hit that A24 hoped for, you don’t have to look further than CODA to see how a tiny summer release can reintroduce itself over the fall and winter. Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers will have to pull off the reverse pivot, convincing voters this steamy tennis threesome is indeed a serious work of art worthy of awards consideration. (Guadagnino also has a much more, well, challenging film coming later this year, the William S. Burroughs adaptation Queer, setting up a battle of topspin versus bottoming.)
For the real freaks, Oscar season starts in May, when the cream of international cinema debuts at Cannes. Three of the festival’s past four Palme d’Or winners have earned Best Picture nominations, a stat that bodes well for this year’s champ, Anora, Sean Baker’s alternatingly hilarious and harrowing update of Pretty Woman. Another Croisette breakout was Jacques Audiard’s Emilia Pérez, an extremely divisive film that my colleague Bilge Ebiri described as “a cross between Mrs. Doubtfire and Sicario reimagined as a musical.” It co-stars Selena Gomez and got bought by Netflix, thus ensuring it will be the most talked-about movie in America for a period of between four months and four days. Emilia Pérez and Anora placed second and third, respectively, in the Toronto International Film Festival’s People’s Choice voting, underlining the impression that they’re a step ahead in the race for Best Picture spots.
For everyone else, the race starts with the festival trio of Venice, Telluride, and Toronto, which take place around Labor Day. I was on the Lido this year, where the biggest surprise was Brady Corbet’s three-and-a-half-hour The Brutalist, a work of obvious heft and ambition that self-consciousnessly invites comparisons to There Will Be Blood and The Godfather. (While we’re on the subject, Francis Ford Coppola has his own film about architecture, Megalopolis, but that one feels more likely to be recognized at the Razzies.) Corbet had to make do with Venice’s Best Director prize; the Golden Lion went to Pedro Almodóvar’s first English-language feature, The Room Next Door, which earned an 18-minute standing ovation at its premiere. With so much love behind him, is this the year the Spanish icon gets his first Best Picture nomination?
At Telluride and TIFF, crowds were thrilled by the papal politicking of Edward Berger’s Conclave and the comedy tick-tock of Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night. (Another film about live television, Tim Fehlbaum’s Munich-hostage docudrama September 5, was similarly well received, though there are concerns about how it will play in a post-October 7 world.) Critics hailed the performances in Malcolm Washington’s August Wilson adaptation The Piano Lesson, Jesse Eisenberg’s Sundance holdover A Real Pain, and Mike Leigh’s comeback Hard Truths. The most demanding film of festival season was RaMell Ross’s Nickel Boys, which has garnered comparisons to The Zone of Interest for its ambitious formal conceit: It’s shot largely in POV, like an arthouse version of Peep Show. Nickel Boys also nabbed the plumb opening-night spot at the New York Film Festival, while closing-night honors go to Steve McQueen’s as-yet-unseen Blitz, which combines two of the Oscars’ favorite things: World War II and Saoirse Ronan.
As the Academy’s international membership swells, voters regularly recognize global filmmakers like Justine Triet and Ryusuke Hamaguchi in the Picture and Director categories. Besides Emilia Pérez, a Spanish-language film from a French director, the buzziest international contender might be Mohammad Rasoulof’s The Seed of the Sacred Fig, an Iranian family drama that made headlines when Rasoulof fled the country before receiving an eight-year prison sentence from the very court system his film indicts. He is currently living in Germany, which has selected Sacred Fig as its official Oscar entry.
Still coming down the pike are Ridley Scott’s Gladiator 2, a follow-up to a Best Picture winner; Jon M. Chu’s Wicked, an adaptation of the first half of the famed musical; and James Mangold’s A Complete Unknown, a biopic of obscure Nobel laureate Robert Zimmerman. Robert Zemekis will de-age Tom Hanks and Robin Wright for Here, while another Robert, Eggers, will update Dracula with Nosferatu. If any of them hits with audiences, they’ll add some mainstream appeal to a season that could use it. With fewer sure bets, unconventional picks could slip in. Perhaps this will be the year there’s room in the Best Picture ten for a critically-acclaimed animated film like The Wild Robot or a heartwarming, politically relevant documentary like Will and Harper?
You may have noticed a conspicuous lack of women’s names in the paragraphs above. The hopes for female filmmakers this year may rest on the Academy embracing the provocative gender politics of Halina Reijn’s Babygirl or an International Film contender like Rungano Nyoni’s On Becoming a Guinea Fowl making the jump to the majors.
Will A24 Dominate the Best Actor Race?
Colman Domingo following up his Rustin nom with a vulnerable star turn in Sing Sing. Adrien Brody baring his soul as a traumatized architect in The Brutalist. Daniel Craig shedding every last vestige of secret-agent swagger to play a lovelorn addict in Queer.
That could be 60 percent of the eventual Best Actor lineup, but for one potential snag: All three films are A24 releases. At a certain point, will the indie distributor have to concentrate its resources? (At the moment, Craig appears the weakest horse after a mixed festival reception for Queer.) Heck, they could even put the “four” in A24 if Sebastian Stan’s disfigured actor from A Different Man gains traction — though Stan will also be repping a second performance as a figure people recoil from, playing Donald Trump in the controversial biopic The Apprentice.
Some Oscars trivia: The long-overdue Ralph Fiennes has only ever been nominated for Best Picture winners, which could be a good-luck charm in the likely event he earns a third nod for shepherding the proceedings in Conclave. If John David Washington gets in for his brother Malcolm’s The Piano Lesson, the nepo king would be the first actor directed by a sibling to be nominated since Talia Shire in The Godfather Part II. Would Ethan Herisse count as a lead actor in Nickel Boys, even if his face is rarely seen onscreen?
The Academy doesn’t usually go for men under 30, but this winter brings two Oscar-certified 28-year-olds shooting for their second nominations. In Gladiator 2, Paul Mescal will step into the award-winning sandals of Russell Crowe. In A Complete Unknown, Timothee Chalamet has the even harder task of inhabiting Bob Dylan. But if he pulls it off, nominating a rising star for a music biopic is the kind of thing about which Oscar voters don’t think twice, it’s all right.
This is a shallower Best Actor field than we’ve seen in the past, but not so shallow that I can see past winner Joaquin Phoenix making the grade for the underwhelming Joker: Folie à Deux. Once was probably enough there.
In the Best Actress Bloodbath, It’s Newcomers Versus Veterans
If Anora and Emilia Pérez wind up competing in Best Picture, there’s every chance the Best Actress race will be the Oscar undercard. As a Brighton Beach exotic dancer whose whirlwind marriage goes awry, Anora’s Mikey Madison looks primed for a breakout with a knockout final scene that should leave viewers walking out singing her praises. If the Better Things alum can charm middle-aged Academy voters the same way her character does her VIP-room regulars, watch out. But the same day Anora won the Palme, Emilia Pérez’s Karla Sofia Gascon was jointly awarded Cannes’ Best Actress prize alongside three of her co-stars. Gascon, a veteran of Spanish TV, is running in the lead as a cartel leader who secretly transitions, then attempts to atone for her crimes. (I told you it was a polarizing movie.) She could make Oscar history as the first openly trans actress to receive a nomination.
Aiming to disrupt these two newcomers are a handful of past winners. On the eve of Venice, Netflix bought Pablo Larraín’s Maria, which sees Angelina Jolie making a grand return to the screen as opera legend Maria Callas. Critics on the Lido dinged Maria for being statelier and less campy than Larraín’s previous biopics Jackie and Spencer, though that could be a good thing for Jolie’s chances of receiving her first nomination since 2008’s Changeling. A year after Julianne Moore raised eyebrows for running in supporting for May December, she’ll change tack for The Room Next Door: Moore and co-star Tilda Swinton, playing old friends who reconnect after one’s terminal diagnosis, will both campaign as leads. The two-lead gambit hasn’t been successful since Thelma and Louise, but you have to respect the break with conventional wisdom.
When it comes to multi-time Oscar nominees still waiting for their first trophies, the consensus out of TIFF was that the Amy Adams vehicle Nightbitch is a fascinating misfire ill-served from being seen through the lens of whether Adams will finally win one. Saoirse Ronan’s Orkney addiction drama, The Outrun, fared better on the festival circuit, though this small passion project may be in danger of being drowned out by splashier competition. (Ronan also has Blitz coming, where she’ll be placed in Supporting.)
On the heels of Emma Stone winning for Poor Things, two veteran actresses will test the Academy’s boundaries around sex and nudity. Nicole Kidman won Best Actress at Venice for her performance as a robotics CEO getting dommed by her intern in Babygirl. Then there’s Demi Moore of The Substance, a body-horror flick about aging that makes Babygirl look like Out of Africa. Compared to the gross-out set pieces of The Substance, a merely unsympathetic character like Hard Truths’ Marianne Jean-Baptiste may be an easier sell. Reuniting with Mike Leigh decades after her Oscar-nominated turn in Secrets and Lies, Jean-Baptiste gives a blistering performance as a woman constitutionally incapable of having a pleasant interaction with anyone.
Let’s not forget Challengers’ Zendaya or Thelma’s June Squibb, who could parlay her inevitable AARP Movies for Grownups win to Oscar glory. And we may need to save a seat for Wicked’s Cynthia Erivo, a performer who has demonstrated a preternatural gift for winning awards: If Erivo defies gravity and takes the Oscar, she’ll have EGOT’d before turning 40.
Will There Be Another Double-Up in Best Supporting Actor?
Dependent as it is on coattail nominations, Supporting Actor is perennially the last acting race to come into focus. But at this early hour, I could see nods for The Brutalist’s Guy Pearce, who reaches new heights of camp as an entitled captain of industry, and Sing Sing’s Clarence Maclin, a first-time pro essentially playing himself. We should also see a pair of Succession stars reunite on the awards trail: Kieran Culkin, as a charming underachiever in A Real Pain, and Jeremy Strong, as The Apprentice’s devilish Roy Cohn. Samuel L. Jackson’s role in The Piano Lesson has been reconfigured in a way that gives him less to do than onstage, but Netflix will surely make the case that Jackson, who received an honorary Oscar a few years back, is due for proper recognition.
Last season was the first in a while that didn’t feature two supporting-actor nominees from the same film. (Even then, we came close, as Poor Things’ Willem Dafoe was probably sixth place.) GoldDerby has Stanley Tucci and John Lithgow as Conclave’s strongest cardinals, but I can’t help but think their co-star Carlos Diehz has more impactful scenes. Gladiator 2 has Denzel Washington and Pedro Pascal as Colosseum-adjacent heavies. Anora may be potent enough to pull Mark Eydelshteyn’s puppy-dog rich kid into the mix; I wonder if Neon is confident enough to also mount a bid for Yura Borisov’s goon with a heart of gold.
Of the season’s two hunks who romance stars of The Golden Compass, I’d sooner bet on Harris Dickinson of Babygirl, who sent Venice into a collective tizzy, than Drew Starkey of Queer, who gives a more recessive performance. As with Ronan, we’ll have to keep an eye out for Dickinson in Blitz, as well as the Jam’s Paul Weller, who’s got the cuddly-grandpa role. By all accounts, Elliott Heffernan is the lead of that movie, but since he’s a kid, unofficial Oscar rules mandate he be run here, too.
I would also love to see a campaign for Adam Pearson of A Different Man, who comes in and turns the entire movie on its head. Another new face, Brandon Turner, is incredibly affecting in Nickel Boys. And Amazon recently announced that both Challengers boys, Mike Faist and Josh O’Connor, are running in supporting, forcing voters to do what Zendaya could not — choose between them.
Best Supporting Actress Could Be a Battle of the Co-Leads
Oddly enough, the supporting-actress race is expected to center around two women who are arguably leads. In Emilia Pérez, Zoe Saldana’s hard-bitten attorney is the musical’s POV character, while Danielle Deadwyler’s role in The Piano Lesson has been reconceived as that film’s dramatic center. There are understandable reasons for running each in Supporting, but in the context of the Academy’s long preferring to recognize Black women in the “lesser” category — where there have been ten Black winners, to only one lead-actress winner — it may be worthy of a side-eye or two.
What of the actual supporting actresses? Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, nominated here three years ago for King Richard, lights up her scenes in Nickel Boys. Appearing opposite Saldana in Emilia Pérez is Selena Gomez, who brings a unique asset to the trail: more Instagram followers than any other woman on earth. Ariana Grande will also run in Supporting for Wicked, as will Lady Gaga for Joker: Folie à Deux, potentially giving this race the feel of a Billboard Top 40 from 2016.
Felicity Jones could coattail as The Brutalist’s long-suffering wife, though she may be hampered by not showing up until the movie’s less-loved second half. Conclave nun Isabella Rossellini has been a fixture on pundits’ lists, but she’s in only a handful of scenes and, for my money, doesn’t have the kind of fiery clip that got Judd Hirsch nominated for The Fabelmans. Still, as Jamie Lee Curtis proved, we shouldn’t underestimate a never-nominated scion of Old Hollywood.
A year ago, I would have pegged one of Natasha Lyonne, Carrie Coon, or Elizabeth Olsen of His Three Daughters as possible dark horses; now I wonder if they’re still a priority, given how many other Netflix contenders are in the field. Didi’s Joan Chen may be in contention for the Rachel McAdams Lovable Long-Shot Award.
We’ll have to wait for Blitz to see how Saoirse Ronan gets on. Same goes for Toni Collette and Clint Eastwood’s Juror No. 2. Lest you pooh-pooh Clint’s recent work, remember he got Kathy Bates nominated for Richard Jewell. Anything is possible!
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