97th Oscars’ Projections: The Initial Outlook On The Best Picture Race
We’re a month off from Christopher Nolan having his moment with his film, Oppenheimer, winning 7 Oscars on its way to being crowned Best Picture. Its a film that I had slotted in as the 4th most likely to win the big prize back last Spring before it became the movie to beat after Barbenheimer weekend and then being on cruise control all season to an all-timer awards season sweep. That race for the big prize ended up the most static one I’ve ever followed and I think the major industry strikes had a big part to do with that. Those same strikes also pushed some major projects from this calendar year to the next, and thus we begin this year’s race with a wide open field and questions abound as to what kind of slate of contenders we see. I envision a very unpredictable race with many ups and downs and a much less locked-in contender field than we got last season. Where as I had eventual winners CODA, Everything Everywhere All At Once, and Oppenheimer within the top 20 in my initial projections for their respective years, I can see our eventual winner perhaps not even being on the radar at the moment.
Because things are so up in the air, I believe the movie to beat right now is Dune: Part Two which has proven itself a big box office hit with amazing critical scores and some of the best audience scores in the history of the major movie logging sites. Do I believe it could become a rare wire-to-wire frontrunner that wins it all? I have my doubts as the film is part two of a trilogy and those movies tend to get overlooked in favor of looking ahead towards the finale of a trilogy if the Academy wants to give a series of movies the big prize. But with so many questions about what this year will look like, and with the possibility of some surprises along the way, I think its safe to assume our only sure-fire contender is the frontrunner on the outset.
Trailing behind in my initial predicted 10 is A24’s Sing Sing which proved to be the audience favorite at last year’s Toronto Film Festival and among the early festivals this year as well; followed by the World War II epic Blitz from Best Picture winner 12 Years A Slave‘s Steve McQueen; followed by Megalopolis which could end up the final new masterpiece from Best Picture winner The Godfather‘s Francis Ford Coppola or a folly that drops off the board quick; followed by Conclave which will see a battle for the Papacy directed by Edward Berger whose film All Quiet On The Western Front was the near Best Picture winner two seasons back; followed by Searchlight’s The Supremes At Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat, MGM’s The Nickel Boys, Netflix’s The Piano Lesson, a potential Best Actor Oscar vehicle for Daniel Craig in Queer, and the jukebox musical sequel to the 2019 Best Picture nominee in Joker: Folie à Deux.
After that we have everything from sequels and prequels to other Best Picture contending films such as Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga and Gladiator II, potential populist contenders like Wicked: Part One or Twisters or Inside Out 2, a curious project from Kevin Costner that will span two entries coming out within months of each other, and many smaller independent films that could find their way to the top-tier contenders. And that’s not accounting for the eventual international players that Cannes will give us at the end of next month or the potential surprises that emerge at the fall festivals.
Best thing to do now is to wait until Cannes to look at the race again and figure out where things have shifted and what fog has cleared. But even then, we’ll still be at an insanely early stage of a race that is wide open and has many twists and turns to go through.
Tier 1: The Initial Frontrunners
01. Dune: Part Two
02. Sing Sing
03. Blitz
04. Megalopolis
05. Conclave
Tier 2: The Initial Heavyweight Contenders
06. The Supremes At Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat
07. The Nickel Boys
08. The Piano Lesson
09. Queer
10. Joker: Folie à Deux
Tier 3: The Initial “On The Bubble” Serious Contenders
11. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
12. Gladiator II
13. Wicked: Part One
14. Kinds Of Kindness
15. The Apprentice
Tier 4: The Initial Longshots On The Verge Of Being Taken Serious
16. His Three Daughters
17. The Room Next Door
18. Here
19. Juror No. 2
20. The Bikeriders
Tier 5: The Initial Longshots Within Striking Distance
21. Didi
22. A Real Pain
23. SNL 1975
24. The Fire Inside/Flint Strong
25. Challengers
Tier 6: The Initial Viable Contenders With A Slim Path
26. Maria
27. The Outrun
28. Anora
29. Emmanuelle
30. Parthenope
Tier 7: The Initial Viable Contenders Searching For A Path
31. A Different Man
32. Exhibiting Forgiveness
33. We Live In Time
34. The History Of Sound
35. The End
Tier 8: The Initial Atypical Contenders With A Slim Path
36. Civil War
37. Hit Man
38. Monkey Man
39. Nosferatu
40. I Saw The TV Glow
Tier 9: The Initial Atypical Contenders Searching For A Path
41. Twisters
42. Horizon: An American Saga Chapter 1
43. Horizon: An American Saga Chapter 2
44. The Lord Of The Rings: The War Of The Rohirrim
45. The Wild Robot
Tier 10: The Initial Longest Of Longshots
46. Inside Out 2
47. Piece By Piece
48. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
49. Kingdom Of The Planet Of The Apes
50. Mufasa: The Lion King
Others To Potentially Keep An Eye On: Alien: Romulus; Back To Black; Bird; Better Man; Bob Marley: One Love; Brief History Of A Family; Ella McCay; Emilia Perez; Hamnet; Long Day’s Journey Into Night; Love Lies Bleeding; Mother Mary; Nightbitch; Oh Canada; Pedro Paramo; Polaris; Problemista; Sasquatch Sunset; Shirley; The Brutalist; The Actor; The Collaboration; The Fall Guy; The Imaginary; The Magnificent Life Of Marcel Pagnol; The Way Of The Wind; White Bird; Wildwood; Woman Of The Hour; Young Woman And The Sea
My Current Top 20?
1. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. (Lingering… “OOOH. We should have given that the Best Picture win last time” feelings seem probable.)
2. Dune: Part Two
3. The People’s Joker (Yes, the last movie’s Lead Actor win shows that The Academy agrees that they “Love That Joker”, but the full Best Picture nomination was weird last time, and in the face of something this universally embraced, critically, Folie a Deux has its work cut out for it. It’s either this one, or NEITHER, personally.)
4. Nosferatu
5. Hit Man
6. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (The reason I assume you put this this low is why I’m putting it this high, at least on paper. They’ve never gone all in on Burton, and I could see huge “Fury Road” energy on the ad and especially Oscar campaign for this.)
7. Wicked: Part One
8. Deadpool & Wolverine
9. Queer
10. A Real Pain
11. Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (Not kidding. If they nail it, an SA2 adaptation could go over like you would. NOT. BELIEVE.)
12. Inside Out 2
13. Rumours
14. Blitz (On the one hand, yes, the Director made a Best Picture winning movie. On the other, he works slow (kinda lacking momentum, and that IS important) and the Academy didn’t rubber stamp him as an enduring fav with Widows.)
15. Borderlands
16. Love Lies Bleeding
17. Back to Black
18. Gladiator II (At a $150-200 million budget, I’d be way more confident. But at $250-310 million? The action scenes are going to be really bleeping stupid, aren’t they?)
19. Joker: Folie a Deux (Divisive and weird nomination last time, and now it also has to fight against the Academy’s anti-sequel bias (even if that is…lessening) AND a better reviewed Joker movie?)
20. Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter Two (I’m, generally, assuming the Academy knows the score here: DON’T. Split the vote. Vote ONLY for Chapter Two. Even for elements more associated with Chapter One. If I WERE assuming vote splitting, I would put The Fall Guy here in slot 20.)
Picture I’m MOST sceptical of in your top 10?
The Piano Lesson. Yes, they nominated two August Wilson film adaptations for Best Picture. But remember who was in those: Fences had Denzel and Viola Davis, actors the Academy, respectively, loves to death and really likes. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom also had Viola AND had a promising dead man delivering his last major work. What does this have to sell itself as an acting showcase? Denzel’s kid, and an actor they recently gave an honorary Oscar, ambiguously an admission of “yeah, we get you have fans, but we’re just not that into you”? Yeah, really can’t see it.Report