Oscars Category Dissection Mega-Post: Performances, Picture, And More! - Awards Outlook
Photo from CNN
Awards analysis is provided by Sean from @MathTeacherMovies.
This Oscar season might be one of the most dramatic and unpredictable in recent memory, but through that chaos the four performance awards have begun to draw a fairly clear path. At this point, there seems to be at least one frontrunner in each category, but there is still a great deal of room for plenty of surprises.
Emilia Pérez is surrounded by controversy and therefore any possible awards that it was the frontrunner for have definitely had a tougher road, but Zoe Saldaña has been able to rise above most controversies in the Best Supporting Actress Race. She will likely win, but if anyone will be able to be upset it will be Ariana Grande for Wicked.
Kieran Culkin seemed to be the obvious front runner for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in A Real Pain and he is still the likely winner. However, the film not getting nominated for Best Picture does create a bit of an opening for another possible performer. It is not a requirement for a Best Supporting Actor winner to be in a Best Picture nominee, but it sure helps. What makes Culkin’s victory possible even with this hindrance is that there is not a clear second place that could take advantage with Edward Norton, Guy Pearce, and Yura Borisov all considered, but none of them have been getting enough of the attention to take the lead.
While there is a fairly clear frontrunner in the Best Actress race, there is still the chance of the race to turn down several different directions. The one definite is that Karla Sofía Gascón is easily in fifth place, even though she was likely not a winner before her tweets were discovered, but now she has definitely put herself in the basement. Demi Moore is the likely winner for The Substance and has been winning many pre-cursor awards while nailing the speeches. There is also the narrative of her being due for recognition after being in the industry for so long.
However, the power of I’m Still Here has proven to be of great influence and is a much more classic film with Fernanda Torres being a much more typical performance to win this award and so she could very likely be the winner. The one drawback on the Torres performance is that while it is deserving, it is still very understated which sometimes makes it difficult to get on the radar of most voters. With Anora’s surging popularity in the Best Picture category, there could be a chance that Mikey Madison also catches that momentum and ends up winning, especially with a younger newly-discovered talent winning in this category being a popular trend.
At this point Best Actor is down to Adrien Brody in The Brutalist and Timothee Chalamet in A Complete Unknown. Brody seems to be the front runner, having won several different precursor awards. However, Chalamet has been campaigning hard and has all of the mechanics of a classic win, especially playing a real character and doing all of the singing…the recipe for an Oscar win.
The performance predictions will be much more solidified after the SAG awards are announced tomorrow night…or things could get much stranger.
Continuing the craziest and most unpredictable Oscar race in recent memory, plenty of unpredictable avenues remain the four above the line categories of Best Picture, Director and the two Screenplays.
Best Adapted Screenplay feels like the easiest to predict with Conclave being the likely winner. The film has won several of the precursors including a win above all original screenplays in its Golden Globe category. It did not win for WGA, but also was not eligible. At this point, the only real competition Conclave has in this category is Nickel Boys which did win WGA and is only nominated for this and Picture, showing the power of its screenplay. Safe money is on Conclave.
Best Original Screenplay is a little trickier, with the frontrunner probably going to the Best Picture frontrunner of Anora, but this category could be pulled in several different directions. The Brutalist is considered one of the many frontrunners for Best Picture and several other awards. Such momentum could catch on and cause a screenplay win, but the story is not what stands out in that movie. A Real Pain just received some precursor awards for its writing, but without the Best Picture nomination, a win doesn’t feel possible. The biggest threat to Anora is probably The Substance as it has a very original and bonkers premise in addition to rising popularity, but Anora still seems like the likely winner.
With Anora’s DGA win, Sean Baker skyrocketed to the top of the race for Best Director, but this late surge might not be enough to sway a majority of voters. The frontrunner for a great deal of this race was Brady Corbet for The Brutalist which has all the markings of Best Director win. The film is likely gonna win several technical awards and is considered a technical marvel for its low budget. It could also be considered one of the more artsy and pretentious pictures which will probably fall short of Best Picture, but Director would be a type of consolation prize. It’s down to Baker or Corbet with the slightest edge going to Baker.
Best Picture is one of the hardest to determine, the wildest in several years, and while the clear front runner is Anora, there are several different nominees that could end up surprising and claiming the prize. Anora had one of the craziest Oscar trajectories in recent memory. It was the front runner for quite a long time before several of the precursor awards came out. It then went quiet after the Globes where the film went home empty handed, which resulted in Emilia Pérez and The Brutalist going head to head. The former is a crazy swing hated by the internet and loved by the industry, which is sometimes a clear path to a best picture win, and The Brutalist is a slow moving artistic picture that wins the hearts of cinephiles and disappoints them when the ceremony ends. Emilia Pérez then dropped down from the top spot due to the Twitter/X scandal. This opened the door for A Complete Unknown, Conclave, or even Wicked…films that may not be at the top of many lists, but were likely to be liked enough to scoot in for a win. Then Anora had the best weekend a film could have in awards season by winning big with the DGA and PGA. The film is now the frontrunner, one that makes the most sense after such a stressful awards run.
The only thing holding Anora back is that it does not have a lot of other possible wins, which is not a deal breaker but definitely an obstacle. There is a world where it just wins Best Picture and Best Screenplay, which is unlikely but possible (Spotlight did it in 2015). However, if the film also grabs Best Director, there would be an even more substantial chance of a Best Picture win. Mikey Madison is still very much in the Best Actress race, and a win would make the Best Picture win hardly an anomaly at all. Then it could be even more interesting, possibly winning Best Editing. If that happens, the suspense will be gone and Anora will be the winner, which will make Sean Baker the first person to win four Oscars in one night (because Parasite’s International film Oscar technically went to South Korea).
Often these articles end with saying there is plenty of room for surprises and I usually don’t actually mean that, but I am being genuine this year when I say it.
The Oscars air on ABC and Hulu March 2nd, 2025.