2024 has been quite a year for movies. Hopefully you’ve already read the Top 10 favorite movies picked by the Cinema Daily US staff, and with Sunday’s Golden Globes* in the rearview mirror, we’re well and fully into the two months leading up to Oscar night on March 2. (*Note the asterisk next to the night’s winners in the article below.)
Starting on Wednesday, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the 10,000 strong industry group that selects the Oscars each year, will begin picking the 2024 films, performances and crafts they think are better than all others. Many of these movies premiered on the festival circuit, whether it was Sundance last January or Cannes in May or any of the September festivals i.e. Venice, Telluride, TIFF, and the New York Film Festival. At this point, many Americans and hopefully a majority of Academy members have already seen the films in the awards discussion.
More importantly, this week will see the release of nominations from the Directors Guild (DGA), Screen Actors Guild (SAG), the Writers Guild (WGA), and the Producers Guild (PGA) – all who are quite significant and pivotal since all four groups are made up of those in the industry who actually make movies rather than those who just watch, review and write about them.
Based on general buzz from the past five or six months, there are five movies that seem to be ahead of all others in terms of their chances of getting Best Picture nominations:
Sean Baker’s drama Anora
Edward Berger’s drama Conclave
*Brady Corbet’s drama The Brutalist
*Jacques Audiard’s musical Emilia Perez, and
Jon M. Chu’s musical Wicked
A couple movies fall on the outskirts of those five, including Coralie Fargeat’s horror film The Substance and Denis Villeneuve’s sequel, Dune Part Two. The latter was released all the way back in March, which gives it a slight disadvantage of being remembered, though Warner Bros. has been screening it a lot to remind Oscar voters. Another movie that’s received a lot of critical attention in recent months is RaMell Ross’ adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s award-winning novel, Nickel Boys, which was the opening night of the New York Film Festival this year.
A movie that first premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) all the way back in September 2023 is the prison drama Sing Sing, starring Colman Domingo and Clarence Maclin, the latter who was incarcerated at Sing Sing. Similar, Jesse Eisenberg’s second feature as a director, the comedy A Real Pain, has gotten a lot of attention for Eisenberg’s screenplay and for the performance by Kieran Culkin since it’s Sundance debut in January last year. The Iranian film The Seed of the Sacred Fig from director Mohammad Rasoulof, who had to make his film in a secret before being exiled from Iran. Fortunately, Germany took him in, and they’ve also taken his film as its Oscar submission.
Other recent films that have been in the conversation include the drama September 5, James Mangold’s Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown, and Ridley Scott’s action sequel, Gladiator II, following 25 years after his Oscar-winning earlier film.
Four of the “top five” – as we’ll refer to them – had prestigious festival premieres, while Wicked has grossed more than $400 million since opening in mid-November, making it the biggest movie in Oscar contention in terms of box office.
Two Oscar categories that seem jampacked with possibilities this year, include the Lead Actress and the Directing categories. If you consider that any Best Picture winner might normally (but not always) have a corresponding Best Director nomination, this is important, because when the DGA announce its five directing nominations on Wednesday, that will immediately give a bump to those five movies. When SAG announce its five Ensemble Cast nominees, also on Wednesday, that gives an edge to those five movies since the acting branch of the Academy (many who are also SAG members) is in fact the largest branch. The movies that receive SAG Ensemble nominations shows important support among the actors with winners in the category being precursors to recent Best Picture wins for the likes of CODA and Parasite.
Looking at the top five Best Picture nominees, all five could go one-to-one with the SAG Ensemble category, but there are other movies with equally impressive casts, including Sing Sing, September 5, Saturday Night, A Complete Unknown, and Nickel Boys. If any of those five movies receive a SAG Ensemble nomination on Wednesday, their chances of receiving more Oscar support is greatly increased. If the “top five” movies mentioned receive nominations from all four of the guilds, it confirms their strength at the Oscars.
As of now, some of the actresses that have been in the conversation for the Lead Actress category are:
Mikey Madison from Anora
Karla Sofia Gascon from Emilia Perez
Cynthia Erivo from Wicked
*Demi Moore from The Substance
Angelina Jolie from Maria
Nicole Kidman from Babygirl
Marianne Jean-Baptiste from Mike Leigh’s Hard Truths
*Fernanda Torres from Walter Salles’ I’m Still Here
Pamela Anderson from The Last Showgirl
Note that the first three of those are from what I’ve deemed to be the top five Best Picture nominees, while Moore is from a movie that also has a potential to get a Best Picture nomination. Not that it matters, since there have been many women who were nominated and even won for Lead Actress without a corresponding Best Picture. Case in point: Julianne Moore for Still Alice, Jessica Chastain for The Eyes of Tammy Faye, and Renée Zellwegger in Judy. All three of them won for Lead Actress despite their movies not getting much Oscar support otherwise. There are five potential actress nominees who fit into that realm, including Angelina Jolie who wasn’t shortlisted by BAFTA, making it less likely for her to get in, unless she wins the Golden Globe.
Because of this, the SAG nominations should help clarify things just as the Academy starts voting, although it’s doubtful the two groups will go five for five in any category. In fact, just by its nature, the Academy has a much more international membership that could help actresses like Jean-Baptiste and Torres get into the Oscar nominations, even if they are snubbed by SAG.
By comparison, the Lead Actor category generally seems to be limited to five specific actors and performances. Chances are that five of the six nominees for the Golden Globes’ category for Lead Actor in a Drama will carry through to get Oscar nominations, but the five actors SAG nominates will be crucial. For instance, if SAG nominates Sebastian Stan for either of his two performances for which he received Golden Globe nominations, that gives him a slight bump for an Oscar nomination. Otherwise, Adrien Brody* (The Brutalist), Timothée Chalamet (A Complete Unknown), Ralph Fiennes (Conclave), and Colman Domingo (Sing Sing) seem to be shoe-ins for the category, and it’s just that fifth slot with Daniel Craig also being in the running for Luca Guadagnino’s (Queer). Sebastian Stan won the Golden Globe for the indie, A Different Man, but a SAG nomination would be even better.
The Supporting Actor and Actress categories have been shaping up over the last few months with actresses in the conversation being Zoe Saldaña* (Emilia Perez), Ariana Grande (Wicked), Felicity Jones (The Brutalist), and Isabella Rossellini (Conclave) – all of them representing Best Picture frontrunners. Others in the mix including Aujanue Ellis-Taylor (Nickel Boys), Danielle Deadwyler (The Piano Lesson), Margaret Qualley (The Substance), Selena Gomez (Emilia Perez), and Monica Barbaro (A Complete Unknown), all fighting it out for that last nomination slot. Again, SAG will tell us a lot about this race, because only the first four actresses received Golden Globe nominations.
The Supporting Actors in contention include Kieran Culkin* (A Real Pain), Guy Pearce (The Brutalist), Clarence Maclin (Sing Sing), Yura Borisov (Anora), Denzel Washington (Gladiator II), and Edward Norton in A Complete Unknown. Five of those six received Golden Globe nominations, but there are others that have been mentioned, including Stanley Tucci in Conclave.
The directing category also has more possibilities and options than nominations slots. Many have been presuming that at least four of the directors associated with the “top 5” films will be nominated, so that would be Sean Baker, Edward Berger, Brady Corbet*, and Jacques Audiard. Oddly, there’s been less talk about Jon M. Chu’s direction for Wicked, even though that’s a huge achievement that’s paid off commercially. It’s also the first part of a two-parter that concludes later this year, so some Academy voters might want to see if he sticks the landing ala Peter Jackson with his The Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Denis Villeneuve didn’t receive a directing nomination for the first chapter of Dune, so many people assumed he might get nominated for Dune Part 2, and yet, he seems to be getting pushed further and further down the ranking. In fact, French filmmaker Coralie Fargeat may have more traction for The Substance, considering how much heat that movie has had since debuting at Cannes. Similarly, Mohammad Rasoulof, director of The Seed of the Sacred Fig should benefit from how much support international filmmakers have received from the Academy’s directors’ branch in recent years. That leaves out the likes of Ridley Scott and James Mangold, who are hugely respected by their industry peers but haven’t been in the conversations leading up to the Oscars. (In fact, Mangold has never been nominated by the Academy for his directing, which is shocking.) The DGA is probably going to clarify a lot for those wondering which films actual directors appreciate the most, but that group doesn’t always go five-for-five with the Oscars either.
Every year, the Producers Guild (PGA) announces ten nominations for Best Picture, but they don’t necessarily line up 10 for 10 with the Academy since the latter expanded its category to ten nominations. The PGA tends to consider box office success when selecting their ten nominees, so smaller international features like Hard Truths, I’m Still Here, and The Seed of a Sacred Fig would have a tougher time there, being that they haven’t received significant theatrical releases in North America as of this writing.
Lastly, the Writers Guild is an interesting factor, because it nominates ten screenplays, split evenly between adapted and original categories. The WGA is also notorious for declaring screenplays not written under WGA’s contract ineligible for their awards. Some of the screenplays that have already been eliminated include Conclave*, Emilia Pérez, Sing Sing, The Brutalist, Hard Truths, The Seed of the Sacred Fig, September 5, and The Substance. That’s three of the “top five” that will not receive WGA nominations but could still be nominated by the Academy writing branch. This gives Sean Baker’s screenplay for Anora a distinct advantage, and it could also help the screenplays for Wicked and even Gladiator II get into the WGA nominations with much of their competition removed. RaMell Ross’ screenplay for Nickel Boys is also looking like a strong contender for WGA’s adapted screenplay frontrunner, which helps it with an Oscar nomination.
One aspect of the Oscar lead-up not covered by those four guilds mentioned include the Academy members in various below-the-line categories, such as cinematography, editing, costumes, hair and make-up, etc. Most of those groups have their own guilds, who have already announced their nominees, but most of them won’t hand out their awards until sometime later in February. As far as the Oscars, though, that’s a large group that might nominate films for Best Picture for different reasons than those other groups.
To wrap things up, trying to predict what movies and performances might make their way to Oscar night has never been an exact science, and there is always room for surprises, but this week’s guild nominations will go a long way to letting people know which movies to watch before Oscar night.
Oscar nominations will be announced on the morning of Friday, January 17, and then the Oscar ceremony will take place on March 2, airing on ABC.