After months of predictions, analysis, and tea leaf reading, we finally know the nominees for the 98th Academy Awards. While it all mostly went to plan, (my final prediction score of 98/120 is one better than last year), there were a few shock nominations and painful snubs, but, on the whole, the Academy has delivered fairly solid selections this year.
Let’s take a closer look at everything that went down with the good, the bad, and the ugly of the 2025 Oscar nominations.
THE GOOD
Sinners makes history. We knew it would do well. We knew it had a strong chance equal or break the record for total nominations. But 16 nods is a result beyond anything most imagined. In the end, Sinners didn’t even need the extra category of Best Casting to beat La La Land and Titanic‘s record of 14 nominations. And, to be fair, both those films had two sound categories to bolster their overall tally. It swept like no film has swept before. It was technically eligible in 17 categories, missing Best Actress purely due to the fact that it doesn’t feature a lead female performance. With her fifth nomination for Best Costume Design, Ruth E. Carter becomes the most-nominated Black woman in Oscars history. Autumn Durald Arkapaw is only the fourth woman nominated for Best Cinematography and the first woman of colour.
One Battle After Another also dominates. Any other year, a film receiving 13 nominations would be considered a huge sweep, so you have to feel for the team that they aren’t receiving such headlines today. As expected, it’s Paul Thomas Anderson’s most-nominated film in his incredible career. PTA took his personal nomination tally up to 14 without a win. That streak will undoubtedly finally come to an end on March 15.
International films in the spotlight. For the first time in history, four non-English language performances are nominated in the same year. The Secret Agent and Sentimental Value are the 12th and 13th non-English language films to be nominated for both Best International Feature Film and Best Picture. For the eighth year in a row, at least one non-English language film has been nominated in the Best Picture category. The Secret Agent is the second consecutive Brazilian Best Picture nominee. Wagner Moura (The Secret Agent) is the first Brazilian to be nominated for Best Actor. Sentimental Value is the first Norwegian film to be nominated for Best Picture. And one crazy stat: Stellan Skarsgård (Sentimental Value) is the very first Best Supporting Actor nominee for a non-English language film.
Women on top. With 74 women nominated, this beats the record of 71 set in 2023. With their Best Sound nomination for Sirāt, Amanda Villavieja, Laia Casanovas, and Yasmina Praderas become the first all-women sound team to be nominated for a sound award. Chloé Zhao (Hamnet) became only the second woman to receive multiple Best Director nominations. Charmaine Chan (Jurassic World Rebirth) is the sixth woman in history to be nominated for Best Visual Effects. Amy Madigan (Weapons) made history as the woman with the longest span between acting nominations at 40 years. For the seventh consecutive year, at least one film nominated for Best Picture has been directed by a woman. At 37 years-old, Emma Stone (Bugonia) broke Meryl Streep’s record to become the youngest woman to reach seven Oscar nominations. Stone is also the first woman to be nominated twice for producing and acting in a single film.
That Amy Madigan nomination. What started as a pipedream when Weapons dropped in August became a reality this morning. Horror performances so rarely get their due, but what Madigan delivered in bringing Aunt Gladys to life simply could not be ignored. Her work is exactly the kind of turn that should always be nominated in a supporting category, proving you don’t need to be on screen for a large amount of time to entirely run away with the film. Bravo to Academy members for choosing five actual supporting performances on the female side this year (the male side, eh, not so much).
Jacob Elordi and Rose Byrne do it for Australia. While my Aussie heart broke for Joel Edgerton (Train Dreams), it soared when Elordi and Byrne’s names were called. One is a hugely talented newcomer who finally gave a cinematic monster a heart. The other finally gets her flowers after years of being an underrated gem.
Trains Dreams for Best Cinematography. I had it in my Gold Derby predictions since it was 100/1 odds. Beyond gratifying to see that initial long shot come to fruition.
Delroy Lindo is finally an Oscar nominee. Enough said.
THE BAD
Chase Infiniti misses. It hurt to see One Battle After Another sweep 13 nominations, yet they couldn’t find one for Infiniti. She hasn’t missed a key nod all season, but falls short at the finish line. Maybe Infiniti splits her own votes, and some members voted for her in supporting instead. As a newcomer, she clearly couldn’t compete with the aggressive campaigning of nomination-hungry Kate Hudson (Song Sung Blue).
F1 takes the final spot in Best Picture. Look, it was a perfectly fun summer blockbuster. And I have no issue with this category honouring box office successes. Its technical achievements are hugely impressive and were rightly nominated. But in what world should a 2.5-hour sports commercial be considered one of the ten best films of the year? Especially over at least half a dozen other incredible films that could have taken that spot. Come on now.
It Was Just an Accident runs out of steam. We knew the wheels had fallen off this film’s campaign in the final stages of the season, so it wasn’t a shock to see it missing from Best Picture and Director. At one point, it seemed like a sure thing for nods in both. Alas, it becomes the first Palme d’Or winner since Titane in 2021 to fail to be nominated for Best Picture.
Avatar: Fire and Ash in Best Costume Design. No one, and I mean no one, saw this coming. And few can explain it either. Now I’ve seen some people ask how CGI-created costumes can even be nominated in this category. Well, they are still being “designed.” Deborah L. Scott created all the costumes physically before they were authentically recreated by the visual effects team. Still, it’s baffling that neither of the previous Avatar films landed a nod here, yet somehow the third chapter makes it in at the expense of films like Wicked: For Good or Hedda. Maybe 20th Century Studios just finally got the word out to the costuming branch that Scott was creating the kind of fantasy costume work that’s usually a shoo-in for a nomination, even if the end result doesn’t appear like it on screen.
Blue Moon in Best Original Screenplay. Julia Roberts’ shout-out to Sorry, Baby at the Golden Globes just wasn’t enough to get Eva Victor that screenwriting nomination she so richly deserved. Even The Secret Agent or Weapons would have been more inspired choices here.
Park Chan-wook. In the words of Keke Palmer, “Sorry to this man.” I don’t know what Park has to do to finally win the Academy over. I thought No Other Choice was the film to do it. Evidently not.
Paul Mescal is snubbed. Campaigning him in supporting was clearly a mistake. I firmly believe had Mescal been pushed for Best Actor, he would have replaced Ethan Hawke (Blue Moon).
Jurassic World Rebirth in Best Visual Effects. Congratulations on creating the ugliest dinosaurs this franchise has ever seen. Here’s an Oscar nomination.
THE UGLY
Wicked: For Good implodes. Sequels often struggle to replicate the success of a predecessor that landed big with the Academy. Matching the ten nominations and two wins of Wicked was always going to be a tough task, especially only 12 months later. But few out there foresaw Wicked: For Good receiving a grand total of zero Oscar nominations this year. Let’s do a mini deep dive into how and why this all went down.
Perhaps this shouldn’t have come as such a shock, given the sequel wasn’t as well-received as the original. The reviews weren’t as strong and the box office results were undeniably disappointing. It’s meant there are plenty of people out there celebrating this result as a brutal rebuttal from the Academy to Universal’s obvious attempts to not only double their box office revenues, but also double their awards season success.
It failed. Miserably. Part of me suspects Universal knew the writing was on the wall when the second chapter didn’t ignite the box office as expected, and they deliberately pulled back on their Oscar campaign. What we saw this season was nothing like last year, where Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande were truly everywhere. Screenings, Q&As, talk show appearances, viral internet clips. It was exhausting to watch, let alone what it must have been like for Erivo and Grande to be a part of.
By comparison, after the sequel finished its world tour back in November, Erivo and Grande have barely been seen together again since. Sure, you can dismiss that as Erivo being busy with rehearsals for the West End production of Dracula. It’s why she wasn’t even present at the Golden Globes earlier this month, where she was nominated; her only major nod all season. But just the fact that she was able to book such a time-consuming gig in the midst of awards highlights how she wasn’t expected to be particularly busy right now.
Say what you will about the film’s overall quality, few could deny its technical achievements were still hugely impressive. And most pundits expected those elements to receive nominations, even if the film failed to get into the above-the-line categories like last year. A nod for Grande was always looking shaky. Erivo was never happening. And a Best Picture nod evaporated when those first reviews hit. Still, it was looking good for at least a handful of craft nominations.
The fact it was shunned for categories like Best Costume Design and Production Design (the two Oscars it won for 2024) is utterly stunning. One could say the same of its absence from races like Make-Up and Hairstyling and Visual Effects. The film had two potential nominees for Best Original Song, and both missed. The creative team can say these new songs were written to add more dimension and padding to the sequel, but we all know it was an attempt to win an Oscar. That might be the biggest failure of this entire disaster.
What’s truly bizarre is the fact Wicked: For Good did so damn well with the Oscars shortlists, with eight mentions, tying with Sinners for the most of any film. If the Academy hated the film that much, why would they shortlist it so heavily? Sure, shortlists don’t always equal nominations, but such a tally would normally signal at least a few nods are coming that film’s way. It certainly did for Emilia Pérez last year.
When all is said and done, I think it comes down to Universal’s decision to release the second chapter only 12 months after the previous film. It meant Academy members still had memories fresh in their minds of voting for practically the exact same achievements just one year earlier. Why waste a nomination spot on Paul Tazewell’s costumes that had already been nominated and won when you can give that spot to something fresh and new? Why nominate its production design, score, sound, make-up, or visual effects when it’s a case of been there, done that?
Sequels struggle with this problem to secure Oscar votes when there are years between films, let alone one year. Unlike its predecessor, Dune – Part Two couldn’t land nods for categories like Costume Design, Film Editing, and Makeup & Hairstyling. Likewise, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever couldn’t replicate the tally of Black Panther. But neither was ignored entirely by the Academy, which is what makes this result for Wicked: For Good so shocking and damning.
No one mourns the wicked, but perhaps Universal will be lamenting their misteps on this one for years to come.