With the Academy’s nominations announcement drawing closer by the day, it’s time to lay it all on the line with my final Oscar nomination predictions. Last but certainly not least for my Oscar nomination predictions is naturally the big one. After an exhaustively long pre-season, we will soon finally know the films in the running for Best Picture. Through the chaos of release date delays and changes in distribution methods, the major and independent studios and the plethora of streaming platforms have offered up a stellar offering of contenders for the Academy to choose from. Personally, I feel this will be one of the best line-ups in years.
Another question that will soon be answered is the exact number of nominees we’ll have this year. The Academy’s voting system all but rules out the chance of ten nominees and thankfully that will be a thing of the past next year when we return to a guaranteed ten film line-up. It’s mildly mathematically plausible ten films will make it in but it’s more logical to assume we’ll see eight or nine like in previous years.
All season long, Nomadland and The Trial of the Chicago 7 have been our two absolute certainties for Best Picture nominations. And we can now add Minari to that list of frontrunners. All three nabbed nominations from the Golden Globes, PGA, DGA, BAFTA, and Critics Choice (okay, Minari is relegated to the foreign-language category at BAFTA and the Globes, but it still counts). The Trial of the Chicago 7 and Minari have SAG ensemble nods (Nomadland was never getting one) and all three earned nominations at all manner of guild and critics associations too. Lock them all in.
On the next rung down, we have One Night in Miami (SAG, PGA, DGA First-Time Feature, CCA, WGA), Promising Young Woman (PGA, DGA, CCA, GG, WGA), and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (SAG, PGA, CCA, WGA) who all feel like sure-things by this point. Mank hasn’t experienced a stellar precursor season run (no BAFTA nom for Best Film. no SAG ensemble nod, and no major victories to speak of), but it would be unwise to bet against the power of David Fincher and a movie about the golden age of Hollywood.
Thanks to impeccable word-of-mouth and a strong campaign push from Amazon Studios, Sound of Metal emerged as a genuine contender across the board in the last few weeks of the precursor season, particularly after it scored a PGA nom. It’s lept over several other contenders we long-suspected were surely in line for a Best Picture nom like The Father and Da 5 Bloods and now feels entirely secure in the final line-up. As much as it pains me to say, Da 5 Bloods has clearly been forgotten this season and won’t be the Oscar player it deserved to be.
Realistically, that leaves us with one final spot to fill. When Warner Bros. remained steadfast in holding Judas and the Black Messiah back to allow for a traditional theatrical release (that soon became a simultaneous streaming release on HBO Max), it severely damaged the film’s chances to sweep through awards season. Once it debuted in late January at Sundance, the film’s Oscar campaign finally launched and Daniel Kaluuya almost immediately became the frontrunner for Best Supporting Actor. When the film nabbed PGA and WGA nods, it showed it’s got the power to score a Best Picture nomination too.
If (and it’s a big if) there are to be ten nominees, the tenth spot will likely be between News of the World and The Father. News of the World is the kind of breezy, nostalgic Sunday afternoon film older members of the Academy will swoon over. And there’s still every chance it will overperform and sneak into Best Picture over something more challenging like Sound of Metal or Judas and the Black Messiah. The Father had a horror precursor season where its stars Anthony Hopkins and Olivia Colman were often absent from critics awards nominations and the film limps into Oscar nomination voting with major nods from just BAFTA and the Golden Globes, which just isn’t enough this year.
BEST PICTURE PREDICTIONS:
1. Nomadland (Searchlight Pictures)
2. Minari (A24)
3. The Trial of the Chicago 7 (Netflix)
4. One Night in Miami (Amazon Studios)
5. Promising Young Woman (Focus Features)
6. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (Netflix)
7. Mank (Netflix)
8. Sound of Metal (Amazon Studios)
9. Judas and the Black Messiah (Warner Bros.)
10. News of the World (Universal Pictures)
Alternate:: The Father (Sony Pictures Classics)