Predicting the 2026 Academy Award Nominations

Back in 1951, Joseph L. Mankiewicz's peerless All About Eve, with 14 nods, set a record for the most Academy Awards nominations earned by a single film. Astonishingly, that record holds 75 years later, with only two releases, 1997's Titanic and 2016's La La Land, managing to tie it. Every once in a while, before a new batch of Oscar nods is announced, the question looms over whether another release might shatter that ceiling. But this year, in the lead-up to the January 22 announcement of 98th Academy Awards contenders, the question isn't whether a movie will score 15 nominations or more. It's whether two of them will.

Over the past couple of years, we've certainly had close calls. Were its visual effects eligible, the film's A-bomb explosion not having made the 10-title longlist of qualifiers, 13-time nominee Oppenheimer would almost certainly have netted 14 – and a nod for, say, co-star Matt Damon would've pushed it over the top. Similarly, last year's Emilia Pérez (a movie I vowed to never mention again, dammit) nabbed 13, and we haters can only thank the gods of good taste that citations for the movie's production design, costumes, and co-star Selena Gomez weren't added to the haul. This year, however, One Battle After Another and Sinners appear poised to not only tie but update that most-nods-ever stat … and their tallies might not even end at 15.

With my predictions below, that's currently the number at which I see both Paul Thomas Anderson's comic thriller and Ryan Coogler's musical vampire yarn landing. And the tie would be fitting, as both are Warner Bros. pictures whose staggering artistic success and terrific box office (in Sinners' case, spectacular box office) have to be testaments to the studio's faith in giving two singular, exemplary filmmakers boatloads of cash and a thumb's-up and letting 'em run wild.

Yet further recognition could certainly happen. If my guesses come to pass and voters add Regina Hall's name to the Supporting Actress lineup, and they should, OBAA stands at 16 nods – 17 if costume designers choose to reward Leo's already-iconic ratty bathrobe. My present assumption of 15 for Sinners, meanwhile, only includes one member of its sprawling cast, and cases could be made for as many as five others. Truth be told, Coogler's film receiving fewer than 13 nods would be considered underperforming. Fewer than 11 would be considered disastrous.

Backing up a tad, let me accent the “present” in that mention of “present assumption,” because I've been waffling so hard on a bunch of these categories that I might easily change my mind on a few immediately after publishing this article. But those second guesses won't matter – whether I like it or not, we're official now!

With Academy voting ending tomorrow and Oscar nominations coming out a week from today, we have all the tea leaves in front of us: the winners of the Critics Choice Awards (CCA) and Golden Globe Awards; the nominees for the Directors Guild Awards (DGA), Producers Guild Awards (PGA), and Screen Actors Guild Awards (SAG), whose new rebranding as "The Actor Awards" doesn't have a good acronym for this article, so I'm sticking with "SAG"; longlists of 10 from the British Academy of Film & Television Awards (BAFTA), whose actual nominees won't be revealed until January 27; random guild nominations and Academy longlists of 10 for numerous tech categories and the international/documentary features; and honorees from the country's three most-prestigious film-critics organizations in the Los Angeles Film Critics Association (LAFC), the New York Film Critics Circle (NYFC), and the National Society of Film Critics (NSFC). Plus literal dozens of regional film-critic groups it's better to ignore. Let's see if any of this info helps or hinders.

The boldface names and titles below are my predicted nominees, with non-boldface denoting runners-up, and predictions in order of probability.

BEST PICTURE

One Battle After Another

Sinners

Hamnet

Frankenstein

Marty Supreme

Sentimental Value

The Secret Agent

F1: The Movie

Bugonia

Train Dreams

It Was Just an Accident

No Other Choice

Weapons

Blue Moon

Wicked: For Good

Let's not number the myriad reasons why those first five boldface titles are mortal locks. Suffice it to say that never before have the five films cited by the DGA been the same five cited for the SAG-ensemble trophy, which is that outlet's de facto Best Picture category. They're all in, and almost guaranteed at least one Oscar victory apiece.

Although both suffered a few high-profile dissings, indie studio Neon's foreign-language releases Sentimental Value and The Secret Agent also seem totally secure. Because SAG voters this year, as in most every year, displayed an allergy to subtitles, none of the SV or TSA performers got a nod, and The Secret Agent was also, more surprisingly, left off BATFA's longlists for Picture, Director, and Leading Actor. But SAG is just about the only place where Sentimental Value has missed; all four members of its acting quartet were Globe- and CCA-cited, and the PGA even popped for a nod despite being nearly as 'murican-leaning as SAG. As for The Secret Agent, it not only won for director Kleber Mendonça Filho and star Wagner Moura at last spring's Cannes Film Festival, and not only won for Moura and as Best Motion Picture – Non-English Language at the Globes, but it's this year's International Feature Film contender from Brazil … and Brazil, which has a not-insignificant voting bloc, is cra-a-a-azy for the Oscars. Seriously. Watch YouTube clips of folks going nuts when last year's eventual International Feature Film victor I'm Still Here also netted nods for Best Picture and star Fernanda Torres. Beyond The Secret Agent completely deserving its accolades, the Brazilian contingent (and those who simply love the film) will make a Best Picture nomination happen.

So that's seven contenders that are good to go. The other three Best Picture nominees, it both delights and pains me to say, will almost surely come from a heavily winnowed-down field of 10.

Working backward, and starting with the two titles left off my top 15, Avatar: Fire & Ash and Sirât are probably out of the running. James Cameron's threequel, which is nearly assured a Visual Effects win, will have to console itself with its kajillions of dollars, and probably would've stood a chance in this category if it was the series' climax. (Alas.) And Spain's International Feature Film possibility has a good shot in that race and some below-the-line ones, but is also likely fifth among Neon's Best Picture possibilities, and a lineup in which a full half of the contenders are foreign-language releases doesn't seem likely. Given Hollywood's increasing disinterest in Oscar fare, though, that day might be coming soon.

While the Wicked finale will no doubt be in the running for craft recognition and maybe Ariana Grande, you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who thinks it's superior, or even equal, to its predecessor, and its box office is hardly comparable. The film's failure to make the Globes' Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy lineup, a category seemingly invented for the likes of For Good, also stings. Despite being completely dissimilar, Blue Moon and Weapons are weirdly in the same boat as movies that could be (a) in the Picture mix with one acting nod, an Original Screenplay citation, and maybe one other mention; (b) nominated solely for their showcase performer; or (c) ignored completely. I'm going with unmentioned choice (d), thinking Blue Moon's recognition will rest solely on Ethan Hawke's shoulders, and a Film Editing nod will prevent Amy Madigan from being Weapons' sole representative.

On to two of Neon's other possibilities. Even when he makes a masterpiece, which seems to be all the time, Park Chan-wook has never been embraced by the Academy, and I'm only keeping No Other Choice so high among likelihoods because of its insane reviews and unexpectedly hearty Globes showing. And while, especially in light of the Academy's increasingly international membership, it feels counterintuitive to guess against a Cannes Palme D'or winner – each of the last three having made the Oscars' Best Picture lineup – the Globes citations for It Was Just an Accident haven't translated elsewhere beyond the wholly fringe Gotham Awards. It wouldn't surprise me to see writer/director Jafar Panahi's pitch-black comedy acknowledged. It would also be wildly unusual for three foreign-language titles to make the top 10, and all of them from the same studio, no less.

Let's consequently expect the Oscars, for those eight-through-10 slots, to Make Best Picture American Again! This doesn't feel like a year in which voters will necessarily want to embrace Netflix, and Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein is already carrying that burden. But Clint Bentley's gorgeous Train Dreams found deserved favor on the AFI, PGA, and CCA lists, and Adapted Screenplay and Cinematography nods seem inevitable. I frankly never thought voting bodies would appreciate the batshit-nuts Bugonia the way I do, but it keeps showing up everywhere: in the BAFTA longlists (where they even cited director Yorgos Lanthimos); with the Globes, CCA, PGA, AFI; with stars Emma Stone and, unexpectedly but thrillingly, Jesse Plemons at SAG. (More on him later.) I'm still not sure how many Academy members might love-love Bugonia, but for the moment, this nod seems probable.

And that brings us to F1: The Movie, which technically isn't its precise title, but I'm grumpily unwilling to insert that copyright symbol after the “F1.” Despite its PGA citation, the thought of this thing, in this year of unusually stellar options, making the top 10 seems absolutely ridiculous to me. Yet if you agree that the Wicked and Avatar sequels are long shots at best, the 2026 Best Picture field will otherwise only have Sinners to carry the blockbuster mantle – hardly the look the Academy might want in face of continued arguments about “relevancy.”

Plus, without the Formula One offering, there's a curious absence of Dad Movies, and at least one Dad Movie seems to always make the lineup. A Dad Movie can be easily defined by meeting one of four criteria: (1) it's a war flick; (2) it's a sports flick; (3) it's a serious-minded thriller with a major star; or (4) it's about a famous 20th-century white guy. You'd have to go back 23 years to find a Best Picture race without one – and even then, I'm sure plenty of dads dug Gangs of New York. (The Scorsese/Leo combo is also intrinsically “Dad Movie.”) F1 has Brad Pitt, fast cars, loud noises, corny jokes, generational tension, underdog triumph, off-screen sex, and Top Gun: Maverick director Joseph Kosinski at the helm. Laugh if you must. Underestimate it you shouldn't.

BEST DIRECTING

One Battle After Another, Paul Thomas Anderson

Sinners, Ryan Coogler

Frankenstein, Guillermo del Toro

Marty Supreme, Josh Safdie

The Secret Agent, Kleber Mendonça Filho

It Was Just an Accident, Jafar Panahi

Hamnet, Chloë Zhao

Sentimental Value, Joaquim Trier

I'm fully planning on at least one wrong guess per category this year. This is a category in which I might be wrong on two, or even three – or even, God forbid, four. Inevitable victor Anderson is a done deal, and so is Coogler … I hope. (That stupid Box-Office Achievement category at the Globes, which Sinners won, is nothing if not a bad-luck omen, given that previous winners Barbie and Wicked both found their directors ignored come Oscar time.) Degree of difficulty, overall enthusiasm for the work, and massive fondness for del Toro will likely keep his name in the mix, especially when combined with knowledge that the director has pretty much been wanting to direct Frankenstein since childhood. I fought against including Safdie because I don't like his movie, and haven't liked his previous movies, and have always considered Benny the cooler of the brothers. There's no denying, though, that Marty Supreme is directed within an inch of its life, which many seem happy about, and a late-breaking Timmy Chalamet hit did the job for A Complete Unknown's James Mangold last year. So why not?

That's four of the DGA's anointed five, but I'm not feeling even slightly confident about fifth inclusion Zhao joining their ranks at the Oscars. Would you be shocked to learn that the members of the Academy's directing branch are largely male? And largely white? And, as a collective, tend to not vote for people who aren't male and white? Okay, that's unfair. They tend to not vote for women regardless of color. To date, only nine women over 97 years have been nominated for Best Directing Oscars, and only Jane Campion has been nominated a second time … and she had to wait 28 years for that nod (and win). Historically speaking, though, the Academy's directing branch has also been hesitant about acknowledging intimate character pieces in lieu of more blunt, more aggressive spectacles. And Zhao's practice, prior to festival and for-your-consideration screenings of Hamnet, of leading audiences through guided meditation rituals in preparation for the experience sounds … . Gosh, what's the word for it … ? Excruciating? Call me a heathen, but if your movie requires Zen-like calm before seeing it, maybe the problem is with your movie, not the blood pressures of the people seeing it.

Yet even if you agree that the incredibly deserving Oscar winner for Nomadland is going to be the sole DGA nominee ignored for her Oscars equivalent, and even if my predictions of Safdie, del Toro, and Coogler prove wrong (please don't let a Coogler diss happen), there are plenty of options to take their places. Neon boys Trier, Park Chan-wook (No Other Choice), and Óliver Laxe (Sirât) can't be discounted, nor can Bugonia's Yorgos Lanthimos or Train Dreams' Clint Bentley. Panahi recently turned himself into Iranian authorities, who demanded his arrest over perceived crimes against the state, and beyond the greatness of his movie, I presumed that the arrest warrant alone would have guaranteed him a nod. I'm sadly not sensing a lot of subsequent support, though. (BAFTA really should've come through for Panahi here.) Consequently, I'm going with Cannes champ Mendonça Filho, whose movie is peaking at the right time given its Globes success, and whose inclusion would definitely give Brazilian fans more to go YouTube-crazy about.

BEST ACTRESS

Jessie Buckley, Hamnet

Rose Byrne, If I Had Legs I'd Kick You

Renate Reinsve, Sentimental Value

Emma Stone, Bugonia

Chase Infiniti, One Battle After Another

Kate Hudson, Song Sung Blue

Amanda Seyfried, The Testament of Ann Lee

Tessa Thompson, Hedda

Without question, Chase Infiniti is one of the cinematic breakout performers of 2025, only one year after she was one of the TV breakout performers of 2024. (Those who saw her in the Presumed Innocent limited series know what I'm talking about.) She's also, for my money, the biggest wild card among all actors in this year's Oscar races, because she keeps getting cited over and over, and I simply don't get it.

This is no impugnment on Infiniti's One Battle performance, which is solid, and certainly no shade on the 25-year-old's screen presence, which is undeniable. But what, exactly, does she do in P.T. Anderson's movie? She has a fun scene with screen dad Leonardo DiCaprio at the start, and from that moment on, her character Willa is toted around from, to borrow the parlance, one battle-ready scene after another. Regina Hall transports her, and the nuns house her, and Sean Penn steals her, and Willa is essentially employed as a prop throughout – the reason for DiCaprio's anxious dad to get his stoned ass off the couch. I love One Battle. I just don't see what Infiniti specifically brings to it, nor how Willa can be considered a lead merely because her portrayer has more screen time than Hall and Teyana Taylor; although Infiniti is on-screen plenty, her character is less active than reactive. Given how much the Academy adores its fresh-faced ingénues, the performer might've actually cruised her way to a Supporting Actress win. As it stands, it feels like she'll be lucky to make the Best Actress final five.

Or am I totally, very conceivably wrong about this? Like Globe winner Buckley, Globe, NYFC, and LAFC victor Byrne, and the presently award-less Stone (who does have two Oscars to make the pain go down easier), Infiniti hasn't missed a single beat along the precursor trail. Not for nothing, but the reading of her name at the Globes ceremony also drew what sounded like the hugest cheers of night – even besting those given to presenter Julia Roberts, who got a freaking standing ovation. I'm consequently overriding my confusion by placing Infiniti in the number-five slot, feeling secure that Reinsve's omission by SAG was merely a case of voters refusing to read her largely subtitled performance.

Should she, Infiniti, or Stone not make the final lineup, the only other conceivable options are three Globe nominees: current SAG contender Hudson, whose Song Sung Blue, I think, needed to be a bigger box-office hit; the BAFTA-longlisted Thompson, whose movie didn't have near the release or awareness it deserved; and Seyfried, whose still-unreleased musical needed to make a more sizable precursor dent. (BAFTA ignored The Testament of Ann Lee completely.) Personally, I'd give Seyfried a nod for The Housemaid, which is why it's probably a good thing I'm not a voting member of the Academy.

BEST ACTOR

Timothée Chalamet, Marty Supreme

Leonardo DiCaprio, One Battle After Another

Wagner Moura, The Secret Agent

Jesse Plemons, Bugonia

Ethan Hawke, Blue Moon

Michael B. Jordan, Sinners

Joel Edgerton, Train Dreams

Lee Byung-hun, No Other Choice

Welcome to what will unquestionably be my Oscars Heartbreak category for 2026, because of the top seven options above (I won't be seeing option eight until this weekend), the only one I want excluded from the lineup is the one who's gonna wind up winning.

For the record, I'm finally at peace with the notion of Chalamet receiving the Oscar he so nakedly craves, frequently while dressed in orange. It's undoubtedly going to be a signature role for the 30-year-old, and if I find him insufferable in Marty Supreme, that's actually to his credit; table-tennis pro Marty Mauser is insufferable, too. But I'm reminded of what I wrote 10 years ago, when I conceded that Leonardo DiCaprio was going to get Best Actor for The Revenant, giving a similarly way-too-much performance grotesquely designed for Academy acceptance: “Can we all move on with our eff-ing lives now?” Just give Timmy the damned trophy already, and let him, and us, sally forth. Leo followed his “Watch me eat raw fish and get mounted by a bear!” turn with the finest work of his career in Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood and One Battle After Another. Here's hoping Tim follows an equivalent trajectory.

So who gets to act as the guy's Oscar-night bridesmaids, and who gets left out? Ironically, the only other Best Actor inclusion I'm certain about is Leo himself – and that certainty isn't 100 percent. More like 95. It's ludicrous to imagine the One Battle lead omitted for his turn in this Best Picture front-runner. But DiCaprio's male supporting actors do have juicier roles, and you know … . Titanic. And The Departed. And Killers of the Flower Moon. And Gangs of New York. And Inception. And Don't Look Up. Leo is actually not nominated for his Best Picture plays more often than he's nominated for them. Considering his Globes and Cannes wins, Moura will almost certainly join Tim and Leo on the Best Actor roster. While Moura's SAG dissing doesn't raise any eyebrows (those pesky subtitles!), his absence from the BAFTA longlist kinda does, yet that would mean more if fellow Brazilian and Globe winner Fernanda Torres wasn't similarly ignored by BAFTA just last year. (That organization also dropped the ball on Penélope Cruz for 2021's Parallel Mothers … so maybe Brit voters just aren't into Portuguese and Spanish?)

Here's where I start crying: Two slots left for four ridiculously deserving actors. (DiCapriro and Moura, for what it's worth, are equally deserving.) Of the four, Edgerton probably gets omitted most easily, his film being a fringe Best Picture contender and the actor, like Moura, not making the SAG lineup. While Hawke's film has even less of a chance at making the Best Picture 10, Blue Moon is reportedly growing in appreciation and is still chugging along at the box office – in its 13th week of release! And wouldn't it be sad if, seven years after First Reformed, yet another Hawke performance that won him Best Actor with both the LAFC and NSFC didn't score him an Oscar nod?

Plemons' resiliency, I have to say, is shocking. He's awesome in Bugonia, but I never thought he would make the SAG lineup over Moura and Edgerton. Maybe awards bodies, in a rare example of sensibility, have concurred that you really can't separate his work from Stone's in Lanthimos' latest provocation; that he and his co-star are a wholly in-sync team. A nomination for Plemons would make me colossally happy. Unless, as I'm unfortunately predicting, it comes at the expense of a first career nomination for Michael B. Jordan, at which point Plemons' recognition would make me slightly less happy. Trust me: I looked for reasons to exclude others. But at the end of the day, Jordan is playing an action hero, which the Academy doesn't generally care about (Sigourney Weaver in Aliens being a lonely outlier); he's playing twins, which the Academy doesn't generally care about (Nicolas Cage, in Adaptation, perhaps being the only Oscar-nominated exception); and, as with Leo, a number of Jordan's ensemble members have – forgive the vampire pun – juicier meat to feast on. I'm predicting a Jordan miss because I think I'm right, but also because I'd be ecstatic to be wrong.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Teyana Taylor, One Battle After Another

Amy Madigan, Weapons

Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, Sentimental Value

Wunmi Mosaku, Sinners

Odessa A'zion, Marty Supreme

Ariana Grande, Wicked: For Good

Elle Fanning, Sentimental Value

Regina Hall, One Battle After Another

How do you solve a problem like Galinda? Without question, Grande, for understandable reason, received the finest notices among everyone involved with the Wicked sequel, and she hasn't been dissed by a single precursor in her lead-up to an Oscar nod. But there's a hitch that voters might be well aware of. Ordinarily, on the few occasions in which a performer has been nominated for the same role twice – examples including Paul Newman in The Hustler and The Color of Money, Al Pacino in the first two Godfathers, and Cate Blanchett in Elizabeth and its sequel – a period of several years passed between movies and performances. Grande's previous nomination as the Good Witch came just last year, and for a film she shot at the exact same time as the one she's currently in the running for. Will members of the Academy's acting branch feel comfortable in giving Grande (who, let's be honest, is still seen as a singer who acts rather than an actor who sings) a second nod when it's essentially an extension of her first nod? Especially considering how Cynthia Erivo's slights with the CCA and SAG demonstrate that she and Grande aren't necessarily a package deal?

I may be overthinking things, but in this year that seems lousy-crowded with Supporting Actress contenders, I'm going with the idea that Grande just misses out. If she does, she'll have lots of company, the names in this category potentially including Glenn Close for Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, Nina Hoss for Hedda, and the BAFTA-longlisted Gwyneth Paltrow for Marty Supreme and Emily Watson for Hamnet. In short, this year's Supporting Actress field is a crap shoot, and when it comes to Oscar nominations, that's always way more fun than certainty. So with fun, and not necessarily predictive accuracy, in mind, let's ultimately go with sure things Taylor and Madigan, Lilleaas over Fanning, Mosaku as Sinners' performance representative, and semi-surprise SAG nominee A'zion in the Monica-Barbaro-in-Complete-Unknown tag-along spot reserved for a Chalamet Christmas release. But keep your eye on Regina Hall, to whom P.T. Anderson gave a special shout-out at the Globes, saying she was one of the first people allowed to see the script and one of his first hires. Hall is in the Best Picture front-runner and has been a beloved movie presence for a quarter-century and co-hosted the 2022 Oscars. This is such stuff as coattail dreams are made on.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Benicio del Toro, One Battle After Another

Jacob Elordi, Frankenstein

Stellan Skarsgård, Sentimental Value

Sean Penn, One Battle After Another

Paul Mescal, Hamnet

Delroy Lindo, Sinners

Miles Caton, Sinners

Andrew Scott, Blue Moon

Traditionally speaking, Supporting Actor is the most boring of the acting categories. And guess what! It's boring again! Four of the five boldface names above nabbed the precursor performance quadfecta of recognition by the CCA, Globes, SAG, and BAFTA longlists. The only one who didn't, Skarsgård, won the Golden Globe. So that's our five, right? Right! I honestly wish I could make my predictions for this category more exciting than that, but barring a left-field pick, these are your nominees. The only inclusion I'm even slightly hesitant about predicting is Mescal, and only because, unlike the others, he hasn't won a single award from any of the many, many awards bodies and critics organizations that dole them out – not even from the Concentric Film Circle of Kalamazoo or whatever. But unlike Cynthia-and-Ariana, Jessie-and-Paul seems very much a package deal, and while I have a few issues with his largely moving Hamnet performance, this mad Mescal fan will have no issue with the guy scoring his second Oscar nod before he hits the ripe old age of 30. He's not gonna win, but no matter – Mescal's Paul McCartney will be hitting screens in two short years! And his leading role in Richard Linklater's Sonheim adaptation Merrily We Roll Along debuts just 12 years after that!

Among this category's maybes, Jay Kelly's Adam Sandler has had an admirable run with CCA, Globes, and BAFTA-longlist inclusion, but for good reason, no one seems to care about that movie. Josh O'Connor, who had major roles in no fewer than four 2025 movies, would've had a stronger shot at recognition for Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery if Rian Johnson's Benoit Blanc mystery received better reviews, and if O'Connor weren't actually a lead disguised as support. (Not that category fraud has impeded Mescal or Skarsgård.) Otherwise, Sinners' exhilarating newbie Caton earned a SAG nomination – one that perhaps came at the expense of his more seasoned co-star Lindo – and Scott won the supporting prize for Blue Moon at the Berlin Film Festival that occurred … lemme check my watch … 11 months ago. As mentioned, I'm probably gonna be off by at least one in my category predictions this year. Though maybe not this one.

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

Sinners, Ryan Coogler

Sentimental Value, Joaquin Trier, Eskil Vogt

Marty Supreme, Ronald Bronstein, Josh Safdie

It Was Just an Accident, Jafar Panahi

The Secret Agent, Kleber Mendonça Filho

Blue Moon, Robert Kaptow

Weapons, Zach Cregger

Sorry, Baby, Eva Victor

Did you note Julia Roberts' lovely, sincere advocacy for Sorry, Baby in her Golden Globes presentation? It was adamant enough for me to place Eva Victor's lauded indie in my top eight … though I'm still pretty certain that the nominees will come from my top seven. And as the January 22 nomination announcement, of course, will end with the revelation of Best Picture nominees, don't be surprised if Blue Moon or Weapons winds up there if either title first winds up here.

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

One Battle After Another, Paul Thomas Anderson

Hamnet, Maggie O'Farrell, Chloë Zhao

Train Dreams, Clint Bentley, Greg Kwedar

Frankenstein, Guillermo del Toro

Bugonia, Will Tracy

No Other Choice, Lee Ja-hye, Lee Kyoung-mi, Don McKellar, Park Chan-wook

Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, Rian Johnson

Nouvelle Vague, Holly Grant, Vincent Palmo

Honestly, eight possibilities seem like too many for this category. I legit believe our nominees are in the top six. And considering how little the Academy has cared for Park Chan-wook in the past – and also considering the filmmaker was expelled from the Writers Guild of America last August for violating WGA strike rules – it might be a full-stop top five.

BEST CASTING

Sinners

One Battle After Another

Marty Supreme

The Secret Agent

Hamnet

Sentimental Value

Wicked: For Good

Weapons

Holy smokes! A brand-new category! With nothing in the way of precedence to help us predict it! The Academy did, however, deliver a longlist of 10 options to choose from, the inclusions beyond the above-mentioned being Frankenstein and Sirât. Flying blind, then, let's go with four of the five Best Picture shoo-ins, adding The Secret Agent because of the literal dozens of beautifully cast supporting figures, and ignoring Frankenstein because of Christoph Waltz.

BEST INTERNATIONAL FEATURE

Sentimental Value, Norway

The Secret Agent, Brazil

It Was Just an Accident, France

Sirât, Spain

The Voice of Hind Rajab, Tunisia

No Other Choice, South Korea

Left-Handed Girl, Taiwan

The President's Cake, Iraq

This is perhaps the most high-profile this category has ever been, and the only true question is: Will Neon absolutely run the table? It could conceivably happen, but I'm expecting that anti-Park bias or disinterest will result in the South Korean entry losing its seat to the Tunisian one.

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE

KPop Demon Hunters

Zootopia 2

Arco

Little Amélie or the Character of Rain

Elio

In Your Dreams

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle

Scarlet

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE FILM

The Perfect Neighbor

2000 Meters to Andriivka

Apocalypse in the Tropics

The Alabama Solution

Cover-Up

My Undesirable Friends: Part 1 – Last Air in Moscow

Mr. Nobody Against Putin

Come See Me in the Good Light

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

Sinners

One Battle After Another

Train Dreams

Frankenstein

Marty Supreme

F1: The Movie

Hamnet

Bugonia

BEST FILM EDITING

One Battle After Another

Sinners

F1: The Movie

Marty Supreme

Weapons

Hamnet

Frankenstein

Bugonia

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN

Frankenstein

Sinners

Wicked: For Good

Hamnet

One Battle After Another

Marty Supreme

Avatar: Fire & Ash

The Fantastic Four: First Steps

BEST COSTUME DESIGN

Frankenstein

Wicked: For Good

Sinners

Hamnet

Hedda

Kiss of the Spider Woman

Marty Supreme

Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale

BEST SOUND

F1: The Movie

Sinners

One Battle After Another

Wicked: For Good

Avatar: Fire & Ash

Frankenstein

Sirât

Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE

Sinners

One Battle After Another

Frankenstein

Hamnet

Bugonia

Sirât

F1: The Movie

Marty Supreme

BEST ORIGINAL SONG

“I Lied to You,” Sinners

“Golden,” KPop Demon Hunters

“Dear Me,” Diane Warren: Restless

“The Girl in the Bubble,” Wicked: For Good

“Last Time (I Seen the Sun),” Sinners

“Train Dreams,” Train Dreams

“Dream as One,” Avatar: Fire & Ash

“Drive,” F1: The Movie

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS

Avatar: Fire & Ash

F1: The Movie

Frankenstein

Superman

Sinners

Wicked: For Good

Tron: Ares

The Electric State

BEST MAKEUP & HAIRSTYLING

Frankenstein

Sinners

Wicked: For Good

The Ugly Stepsister

One Battle After Another

The Smashing Machine

Marty Supreme

Kakuho