The 98th Academy Awards will be held on March 15, 2026. Every year I try to predict who the nominees will be in Best Picture, Best Director, the Acting categories, and the Writing categories. Sometimes I'm pretty good, often I'm horrendous, but it's fun to do and also works as a list of anticipatory titles for the coming year.
Best Motion Picture of the Year
After the Hunt
Ann Lee
Avatar: Fire and Ash
Bugonia
F1
The History of Sound
The Lost Bus
One Battle After Another
Sinners
Wicked: For Good
So, what have we got? After the Hunt is from Luca Guadagnino, who hasn't had an Academy Award-nominated film since 2017's Call Me By Your Name, though we predict his stuff every year. This one stars Julia Roberts as a college professor who must face her own past when a colleague is accused of sexual misconduct. Ann Lee is a biopic of the founder of the Shaker Movement, which sounds fascinating on its own to me, but it also comes from the same creative team that gave us last year's masterpiece The Brutalist. Avatar: Fire and Ash is the latest entry in James Cameron's blockbuster franchise about the Na'vi of Pandora; The Way of Water surprised by being equal to the first Avatar, Cameron never misses. Bugonia is Yorgos Lanthimos' remake of the South Korean hit Save the Green Planet!, about a conspiracy theorist who kidnaps a CEO, believing she is an alien sent to destroy Earth. F1 is from the same team that brought us Top Gun: Maverick, with Brad Pitt as an aging race car driver training a newbie. It's aiming for summer blockbuster status and, if it's a hit, expect it to reach the Dolby. The History of Sound, as I understand it, is about two men preserving the stories of their countrymen in or around a WWI setting and is queer-themed? The Lost Bus is the true story about a driver navigating a bus full of children to safety amidst the blaze of California's deadliest wildfire, the 2018 Camp Fire. One Battle After Another teams Paul Thomas Anderson with Leonardo DiCaprio for a riff on Thomas Pynchon's Vineland. Recency bias alert for Sinners, but the movie's a box office hit from a director whose three previous films - also genre, by the way - have four Oscar wins from 13 nominations. Wicked: For Good is the concluding chapter of last year's hit musical.
Last Year: 3/10 (Conclave, Dune: Part Two, Wicked)
Best Director
Paul Thomas Anderson, One Battle After Another
Jon M. Chu, Wicked: For Good
Ryan Coogler, Sinners
Paul Greengrass, The Lost Bus
Oliver Hermanus, The History of Sound
Is Paul Thomas Anderson set to be the next beloved but un-awarded auteur who finally strolls to Oscar victory? If the movie manages to make money, yes; if it doesn't, he's a nominee anyway, as he's been with his last two films. Was the Academy saving the love for Jon M. Chu for the finale? It's very possible, and if the new Wicked is as beloved critically and commercially as the previous one, he's a sure thing, I think. Will Ryan Coogler's box office success story translate to an overdue nomination in recognition of his ability to make money with a personal passion project? It better! Can Paul Greengrass return to the Academy's good graces after 19 years? With a story that hits right in Hollywood's home state, I'm optimistic. Is Oliver Hermanus the next Morten Tyldum? Someone's gotta be, for some reason.
Last Year: 0/5
Best Actor
Paul Bettany, The Collaboration
Austin Butler, Caught Stealing
Leonardo DiCaprio, One Battle After Another
Matthew McConaughey, The Lost Bus
Jesse Plemons, Bugonia
So right now the only first-timer I'm predicting is Paul Bettany, reprising the role he originated on stage - pop artist Andy Warhol. Let us not forget that 11 of the last 25 nominees in this category were for biopics, and Warhol is a character who is ripe for this kind of treatment yet...hasn't been. Yet. Austin Butler leads an Aronofsky film; Aronofsky's made eight movies, four of them got lead acting nominations, two of them won, it's a great batting average, and Butler's already a nominee for Elvis and respected by his peers. I honestly think putting the trailer for One Battle After Another six months ahead of its release was to help with awards buzz for Leonardo DiCaprio, what little we see of his performance has people abuzz, as it were. Matthew McConaughey is a one-time nominee and winner who seems overdue for a followup nomination, and being the hero in a story about regular people performing courageous deeds amidst a California inferno should hit voters right in the heart. Finally, Jesse Plemons is another youngish respected actor teaming up with an auteur who the Academy clearly loves, and the role of a conspiracy theorist kidnapping a CEO seems tailor-made for both his talents and this era.
Last Year: 2/5 (Ralph Fiennes, Sebastian Stan)
Best Actress
Cynthia Erivo, Wicked: For Good
Renate Reinsve, Sentimental Value
Julia Roberts, After the Hunt
Saoirse Ronan, Bad Apples
Amanda Seyfried, Ann Lee
Last year's narrative of Demi Moore vs. Mikey Madison (an echo of 1950's Best Actress race, with Moore as Davis and Swanson) made Cynthia Erivo an also-ran; expect her to either win or come thisclose. Renate Reinsve, I imagine, came very close with The Worst Person in the World and she's been getting a progressively higher profile - just last year, she had a film with Gael Garcia Bernal, a fun role in the Oscar-nominated A Different Man, and she was the dead girl in the Apple+ series Presumed Innocent with Jake Gyllenhaal - so perhaps this reteaming with Worst Person's Joachim Trier will get her in. Julia Roberts is said to have her juiciest role in years in After the Hunt, and doesn't she seem like the kind of star who should have at least five nominations? I'm taking a leap on Saoirse Ronan in Bad Apples: it's a dark comedy where she plays a teacher who accidentally kidnaps the school's worst student...and everyone is relieved (kind of a riff on "The Ransom of Red Chief"). And how can I predict Ann Lee in Best Picture without predicting Amanda Seyfried in the titular role?
Last Year: 1/5 (Cynthia Erivo)
Best Supporting Actor
Benicio del Toro, One Battle After Another
Jared Harris, Reykjavik
Delroy Lindo, Sinners
Josh O'Connor, The History of Sound
Stellan Skarsgard, Sentimental Value
It feels like Benicio del Toro is one of those actors who should have more nominations than he has, if only because he's been buzzed about for more than a few of his performances (Sicario, Things We Lost in the Fire). The long-in-development Reykjavik follows talks between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev - Michael Douglas and Christoph Waltz were originally attached - and now that it's finished, I expect someone in the cast to get in...like the never-nominated Jared Harris as Gorbachev (Jeff Daniels is Reagan and while he's also never been nominated, I'd have to see that performance). Delroy Lindo is the standout in Sinners' great ensemble, and a nomination could be the reward for being a scene-stealer in a moneymaker as well as a respected character actor with a long career, plus he should have been nominated (and won!) five years ago for his lead performance in Da 5 Bloods.Josh O'Connor and Paul Mescal may both be the leads in the gay drama The History of Sound, but a glimpse at the cast list on IMDb says Mescal's character gets an "older version" (Chris Cooper!), so perhaps he's "more" lead and O'Connor will be pushed to Supporting. I don’t know if Valentina Cortese was the last one to get a Supporting nomination for a non-English-language film that wasn’t a Best Picture nominee, but let me try it with Stellan Skarsgård.
Last Year: 1/5 (Jeremy Strong)
Best Supporting Actress
Ayo Edebiri, After the Hunt
Ariana Grande, Wicked: For Good
Gwyneth Paltrow, Marty Supreme
Emma Stone, Bugonia
Teyana Taylor, One Battle After Another
Am I too high on After the Hunt without actually betting on the director of After the Hunt? Friends, I'm betting on the rising star power of Ayo Edebiri. Glinda's character only deepens in Act Two of Wicked, I expect Ariana Grande's performance to do the same. The Safdies have yet to make a film that Oscar's embraced, but I wonder if they're gonna get the Sean Baker treatment and Gwyneth Paltrow is their Willem Dafoe. The big question for me regarding Bugonia is whether Emma Stone will be pushed as a lead, being, uh, the female lead, or as supporting, considering that's the category original actor Baek Yoon-sik swept in South Korea's awards season. Teyana Taylor, I think, should have won the Oscar for Best Actress two ceremonies ago (she wasn't even nominated, dammit!), and it's exactly that kind of feeling and momentum that can catapult someone to their first nomination when they do a film from the "approved" auteurs.
Last Year: 2/5 (Ariana Grande, Isabella Rossellini)
Best Original Screenplay
After the Hunt - Nora Garrett
Ann Lee - Brady Corbet / Mona Fastvold
A Big Bold Beautiful Journey - Seth Reiss
F1 - Joseph Kosinski / Ehren Kruger
Sentimental Value - Joachim Trier & Eskvil Vogt
Last Year: 0/5
Best Adapted Screenplay
Bugonia - Will Tracy, from the 2003 film Save Our Green Planet! by Jang Joon-hwan
Caught Stealing - Charlie Huston, from his novel
The History of Sound - Oliver Hermanus and Will Shattuck, from the short story by Will Shattuck
The Lost Bus - Brad Inglesby and Paul Greengrass, from the book Paradise: One Town's Struggle to Survive an American Wildfire by Lizzie Johnson
One Battle After Another - Paul Thomas Anderson, perhaps suggested by Vineland by Thomas Pynchon
Last Year: 1/5 (Conclave)
I'm excited to see just how wrong I am!
No comments:
Post a Comment