With the 97th Academy Awards just days away, pundits can confidently say that this has been one of the wildest awards seasons in recent memory. Rarely (if ever) have Best Picture predictions fluctuated this much, and perhaps no campaign in history has imploded quite like Emilia Pérez—but more on that later. While the past few years have seen dominant, heavily predicted winners like Oppenheimer and Everything Everywhere All at Once, none of this year’s nominees can claim that kind of blanket success. It’ll make the Oscars all the more exciting, capping an entertaining (and occasionally exasperating) awards season.
What movie is going to win Best Picture?
In December, I would’ve said Emilia Pérez; in January, my pick would’ve been The Brutalist. But now that the big night is almost here, it looks like a battle between Anora and Conclave. Anora has been on awards voters’ minds since it won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, the first American movie to do so in over a decade. A complex coming-of-age dramedy about a Brooklyn sex worker marrying a Russian oligarch’s son, the film is one of the funniest of the year while still providing a heartbreaking and poignant ending. It’s raunchy but real, and its appeal has widened across the industry in the past few weeks. After getting shut out at the Golden Globes, Anora rapidly shot ahead in the Best Picture race, notching a Best Picture win at the Critics’ Choice Awards and earning top prizes from the Directors Guild, the Producers Guild and the Writers Guild. Though it’s missed a few big wins, Anora looks like a solid pick for the biggest category of the night.
Conclave is the other major contender, thanks to its big wins at the BAFTAs and its SAG Award-winning ensemble. Writer Peter Straughan looks like the favorite to win Best Adapted Screenplay too, adding to the film’s potential haul. The PG papal drama could be a real beneficiary of the Academy’s preferential ballot for Best Picture as well, given its surprisingly wide appeal (who would’ve thought that a movie about picking the new pope would become this season’s cult favorite?). Few can say they actively didn’t like Conclave, and with eight nominations it clearly has admirers from branches all across the Academy—enough that it may bring home the Best Picture trophy.
What happened with Emilia Pérez and The Brutalist?
At one time Best Picture favorites, both films have fallen from grace in recent weeks—one significantly more than the other. Emilia Pérez has been a controversial movie from the start. An epic musical about a Mexican cartel kingpin transitioning and leaving her old life behind, it’s always been a wacky sell and a unique watch. While audiences out of Cannes loved it this past spring, critiques from trans and Latino viewers abounded once it was released on Netflix in November. The mess around the movie was already snowballing when star Karla Sofía Gascón began publicly putting her foot in her mouth. First, she claimed that the team behind Brazilian film I’m Still Here and its lead actress Fernanda Torres were coordinating social media attacks against her. Then, a series of Gascón’s offensive tweets came under public scrutiny, and rather than go through the usual PR channels to address it, she ended up speaking on CNN en Español and, as her director Jacques Audiard later said, “playing the victim.” She’s been scarce on the awards circuit ever since her tweets blew up, but she will be attending the Oscars on Netflix’s dime.
The controversy around The Brutalist is thankfully less intense, but could end up being just as impactful. In an interview, editor Dávid Jancsó spoke about the use of artificial intelligence in the film, from perfecting the accents of actors Adrien Brody and Felicity Jones to helping create some of the movie’s sophisticated architectural designs. The audio AI got more headlines due to concerns about how it changes or detracts from Brody’s performance, but questions still linger around the visuals. While director Brady Corbet flatly denied the use of generative AI, production designer Judy Becker has discussed working with it for the film. This he-said, she-said situation casts a shadow over a film about artistic integrity and the human spirit, and though The Brutalist will likely take home a trophy or two on Sunday, its Best Picture chances have gotten slimmer.
Which actors are the favorites to win at the Oscars?
While no winner is set in stone, there are some names that are all but guaranteed to walk home with an Oscar on Sunday night. For instance, Kieran Culkin and Zoe Saldaña have won at just about every major awards ceremony this season for their supporting performances. Fresh off his many wins for the final season of Succession, Culkin became an awards favorite for his work in A Real Pain, where he plays off of his hyperactive persona to heartbreaking results. Having won the Golden Globe, the BAFTA, the Critics’ Choice Award, the SAG Award and the Independent Spirit Award, he’s on track to nabbing his first Oscar—and delivering another memorably manic speech.
Saldaña’s win for Best Supporting Actress in Emilia Pérez also seems like a lock, having won at the same ceremonies as Culkin (minus the Indie Spirits, plus the prestigious Best Actress award at Cannes). Initially it looked like Ariana Grande and her wonderful work in Wicked might snatch a few of those trophies, but Saldaña has remained a winner throughout. She also has years of industry goodwill behind her, having starred in the Oscar-winning blockbuster Avatar series; now that she’s not CGI and blue, Academy voters can really appreciate the depths of her acting abilities. It also helps that she’s far and away the best performer in the 13-time nominee Emilia Pérez, a film top of mind for reasons good and bad.
The other major acting categories present some wiggle room, with Adrien Brody in The Brutalist and Demi Moore in The Substance looking like the likely winners at this point in the season. Brody’s marathon performance as fictional Hungarian architect László Tóth has garnered praise and hardware, but the previous Best Actor winner faces a late game threat in Timothée Chalamet for his performance as Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown. Chalamet just won the SAG Award this past weekend, and given that the actors’ branch is the largest in the Academy, that overlap in voters could be favorable for him. And, as a fun little fact, if Chalamet were to win the Oscar, he would take away Brody’s record for the youngest winner of the Best Actor Oscar—there’s a lot at stake on Sunday!
As for Demi Moore, she’s probably on the shakiest ground of any “favorite.” It’s a miracle that The Substance got so much recognition from the Academy, an institution normally loath to acknowledge horror, so despite wins at the Golden Globes, the SAG Awards and the Critics’ Choice Awards, the Oscars may be too buttoned up to reward her work. Plus, there’s viable competition from breakout Anora star Mikey Madison, who won at the BAFTAs and Indie Spirits. There is more of a narrative around Moore winning (the Academy loves to reward a performer with a long-overlooked career), but that push and pull of genre versus reputation means there’s some uncertainty there.
Overall, it will be a more exciting Oscar night than usual this Sunday, so expect the unexpected when it comes to the winners! The 97th Academy Awards will air on Sunday, March 2, starting at 7pm ET. For the first time, the ceremony will be available live on ABC and streaming on Hulu.
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