What Comes Next? The Road to the Oscars and What to Look For

We now know the nominations for the 93rd Academy Awards and each category has been whittled down to five contenders each. Now the real race begins. But, in the immortal words of Hamilton‘s King George, what comes next? In the leadup to the Oscars on April 25, there’s still a slew of awards to be announced that may (or may not) help shape the road to Academy Awards. To assist with your final predictions for this year’s Oscar winners, here’s a rundown of what to look for as awards season begins to draw to a close.

All eyes turn to SAG…maybe

Last year, all four eventual acting Oscar winners matched the Screen Actors Guild’s choices, but it was a dull year where Joaquin Phoenix, Renée Zellweger, Brad Pitt, and Laura Dern won every major televised award throughout the entire season. Just the year before, only two SAG winners also claimed an Oscar, and Supporting Actress winner Emily Blunt wasn’t even nominated by the Academy. But what could the SAG winners tell us this year? Will it be left to the SAG Awards to point the way this year? Or will they just muddy the waters further?

While the two male acting categories now appear to be essentially locked for Chadwick Boseman for Best Actor and Daniel Kaluuya for Best Supporting Actor (especially if they both expectedly win at SAG), both female acting races are still completely up in the air. In the Best Actress field, Andra Day scored a surprise win at the Golden Globes (though was snubbed of a SAG nod) and Carey Mulligan nabbed Critics Choice (yet lost the comedy/musical actress Globe to Rosamund Pike), but neither are in the running at BAFTA next month. Frances McDormand leads with wins from the critics group (however, Mulligan trails by just two) and is one of only two female actors with nods at the Globes, BAFTA, SAG, and Critics Choice. With the home-town advantage, Vanessa Kirby could be our BAFTA winner and she is the other aforementioned actor with all four major nominations. And it’s never wise to count out veteran and SAG Awards favourite (five wins from eight nominations) Viola Davis.

If Mulligan wins, does she become our frontrunner? A win at SAG would give Mulligan two major wins that we’d normally consider strong precursor evidence of an eventual Oscar victory. That baffling BAFTA snub could mean nothing, especially given their new voting system this year and the fact Promising Young Woman is performing strongly overall. But what would we make of a SAG win for Davis, McDormand, or Kirby? Would they move into the frontrunner spot without a major win elsewhere thus far? Heck, Amy Adams could win (she still hasn’t won an individual SAG Award from six nominations, so you never know) and the award could be entirely meaningless.

The race for Supporting Actress has been a chaotic mess from the beginning. Jodie Foster scored the Globe, but couldn’t nab an Oscar nod. Glenn Close and Olivia Colman both missed nominations from BAFTA. Critics darling Youn Yuh-jung was snubbed of a Globe nomination, but has surged to nods from both BAFTA and SAG. Amanda Seyfriend was oddly absent at both SAG and BAFTA nominations before her Oscar nod. And the only blip for Critics Choice winner Maria Bakalova was losing at the Globes where she was in the lead category. If Bakalova wins SAG, is she our frontrunner? Will we say the same of a Youn victory? Close won a SAG Award for The Wife before her Oscar loss to Colman. What happens if she wins again? Or could we be looking at a repeat of Blunt and non-Oscar nominee Helena Zengel takes it? Sorry to say, but how you interpret the SAG female acting winners will be entirely up to you. There’s no concrete path to the Oscars for female actors this year.

Then there’s the ensemble category. Last year, the stunning victory of Parasite in this category signaled the true beginning of its Best Picture campaign and eventual win. With assumed Best Picture frontrunner Nomadland missing here (it was never getting an ensemble nomination), a victory for something like Minari would confirm the film is the other major contender for the Academy’s top prize. After losing Best Motion Picture – Drama to Nomadland at the Globes, Aaron Sorkin’s DGA snub, and Sorkin’s loss at WGA, The Trial of the Chicago 7 needs to win SAG ensemble. Badly. If its gargantuan ensemble cast can’t win here, its Best Picture campaign is toast. An ensemble victory for Da 5 Bloods, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, or One Night in Miami would essentially mean nothing, given all three failed to score Best Picture nods.

What impact will BAFTA have?

By adopting a new jury-style voting system this year, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts delivered plenty of surprises and snubs with their nominations, particularly in the acting races. Eventual Oscar nominees Carey Mulligan, Viola Davis, Andra Day, Olivia Colman, Amanda Seyfried, Glenn Close, Steven Yeun, Gary Oldman, Sacha Baron Cohen, and LaKeith Stanfield all missed BAFTA nods, so it’s abundantly clear BAFTA wasn’t all that interested in predicting the Oscars race this year.

Regardless, the BAFTAs will take place just four days before Oscar voting commences, so a win over the pond could still prove enormously helpful for those that did nab nominations from the Academy, particularly acting contenders like Frances McDormand, Vanessa Kirby, Maria Bakalova, and Youn Yuh-jung and films like Nomadland, Promising Young Woman, and The Trial of the Chicago 7. But this year’s diverse list of nods heavily featured British films and performances, meaning it wouldn’t be a huge surprise to see the Brits choose to honour their own for 2020 and many of the BAFTA winners will ultimately have zero impact on Academy members.

Guilds help shape the tech race

To help guide you in your predictions for the winners of the technical categories like production design, sound, visual effects, film editing, and costume design, it’s best to keep your eye on the guild winners in each individual field. In the next few weeks, we’ve got awards from the Makeup & Hair Stylists Guild, Visual Effects Society, Art Directors Guild, Costume Designers Guild, Cinema Audio Society, American Cinema Editors, and American Society of Cinematographers. These will all take place before Oscar voting closes on April 20 and history suggests the winners of these individual guild honours generally go on to claim the Academy Awards.

What do the WGA wins mean?

The victory of Borat Subsequent Moviefilm in Adapted Screenplay at the Writers Guild of America Awards took most of us by surprise. Sure, it wasn’t facing Oscar contenders like Nomadland and The Father due to ineligibility, but it was an unlikely win that may suggest the sequel was a bigger player in the Oscars race than first thought. If nothing else, it might help solidify Maria Bakalova as a stronger chance to win Best Supporting Actress. However, there’s no chance Sacha Baron Cohen’s screenplay is beating Nomadland at the Oscars.

What the WGA highlighted was the strength of Emerald Fennell as our eventual Oscar winner for Best Original Screenplay. When the season began, most of us assumed Aaron Sorkin was sailing towards his second screenplay Academy Award for The Trial of the Chicago 7. But Fennell has dominated this category in the critics season (over 20 wins including Critics Choice) plus also scored directing nods from Critics Choice, the HFPA, the DGA, and the Academy. While Promising Young Woman has surged in recent weeks, The Trial of the Chicago 7 seems to be running out of steam. Fennell’s win at WGA now pushes her into the frontrunner spot for the Oscar, especially given 11 of the last 15 winners of this WGA category have gone on to collect the Academy Award.

Is Nomadland unstoppable for Best Picture?

With wins at the Golden Globes for Best Motion Picture – Drama, Best Picture at the Critics Choice Awards, Best Feature at the Gotham Awards, and a staggering total of top wins from the critics groups, is Nomadland‘s Best Picture victory practically unstoppable at this point? The biggest signal will come at the Producers Guild of America Awards on March 24. If Nomadland can win with the PGA’s preferential ballot voting system (the Academy adopts a similar system), it’s all but over. But if the PGA select something else like Minari, The Trial of the Chicago 7, or Promising Young Woman, it would suggest Nomadland is vulnerable to a preferential style of voting.

It won’t be totally fatal (after being one of the most reliable statistics of awards season, the PGA has only predicted two of the last five Best Picture winners), but it would be Nomadland‘s first major bump along the road in what has been a surprisingly smooth ride thus far. Many have long suspected Chloé Zhao’s quiet, unassuming masterwork may be too simplistic for some (the nauseating “nothing happens!” criticism). Without that kind of consensus passion for the film, it’s plausible voters who don’t have it in their #1 spot may have it way down on their ballot.

This would leave the door open to something like Minari, which many predict could nab plenty of #2 and #3 votes of those members who don’t have it at #1. Nomadland would need to secure over 50% of #1 votes after the first round of tabulation to avoid the runoff voting system kicking in. Since the preferential voting system began in 2009, it’s been widely assumed no film has ever achieved this, but never say never. There’s a lot of love for Nomadland out there, so it certainly could nab more than 50% in the first round and preferential ballots won’t play a factor. But the result of PGA is just as important as ever. The PGA wins of The King’s Speech, Birdman, and Green Book changed the trajectory of the Best Picture race and we could easily see the same this year if Nomadland can’t take it home.