The Oscar race continues with the nominees announcement on Tuesday! Which films have more chances of being nominated? Find out in our Stock Up / Stock Down article!
Oscar nomination day is upon us. We’re bound to have plenty of surprises when the nominees are announced tomorrow at 8 a.m. ET, but as we’ve gone through the past month, the race has slowly started to become more clear. Ahead of the announcement, we look at which films have more chances of being nominated in this month’s stock up / stock down article!
After critics groups set the tone for where things started as we began the race toward the 96th Academy Awards, the past few weeks have been all about the guilds and major precursor awards, like the Golden Globes, as we hit this home stretch before finding out who will be battling it out to win the Oscar this year. In the last four weeks, it’s starting to become much more clear what films are heading into tomorrow with momentum and which ones are just trying to get over the line and hear their names called. So, now that Oscar voting is complete, let’s take a closer look again at whose stock is up and down before the nominees are announced.
STOCK UP: OPPENHEIMER
Some years the Best Picture race feels incredibly unpredictable and like the year’s biggest prize could go to several different things. Then you have years like this where, even with a lot of other films being held in high regard and winning a lot of awards, one feels to be rising above the rest and building a resume in the precursors that looks insurmountable. And that’s exactly the way things have been feeling the past few weeks with Oppenheimer, as Christopher Nolan’s film seems primed to be in the driver’s seat for a lot of awards this season.
Highlighted by Best Picture wins at the Golden Globes and Critics’ Choice Awards, Oppenheimer is the odds-on favorite to win at least six Oscars this year. Nolan himself seems to be primed to win Best Director for the first time (his 31 precursor wins so far is more than any other nominee combined), and it will also likely win in Cinematography, Film Editing, Original Score, and Sound. Throw in performances like Cillian Murphy and Robert Downey Jr. who are favorites in tighter Actor and Supporting Actor races, respectively, as well as Adapted Screenplay and a few other things, and there’s no doubt that right now Oppenheimer seems to be an even bigger favorite than we thought it was even a month ago.
STOCK UP: ANATOMY OF A FALL
Even without being chosen as France’s submission for this year’s Best International Feature, Anatomy of a Fall is building quite a resume this awards season. It’s looking more and more likely that it will be the first international feature to earn a Best Picture nomination without being in Best Foreign Language Film or Best International Feature since The Postman in 1995.
There’s a ton of momentum for this movie coming off its two recent Golden Globes wins and seven BAFTA nominations. Sandra Hüller could (and should) be a lock in Best Actress, and there seems to be a great chance it will not only be in the field for Best Original Screenplay but also could win it — especially as the competition has thinned a bit with Barbie moving to Adapted Screenplay. The interesting thing tomorrow will be if that extra buzz that has been growing could help translate into a Best Director nomination for Triet or even a place in Best Film Editing.
STOCK UP: THE HOLDOVERS
The main competition standing in the way of Anatomy of a Fall’s hopes in Best Original Screenplay seems to be The Holdovers, which has quietly risen in regard this season to the point where I think it should be considered No. 2 in the Best Picture race.
Of the major frontrunners, this seems to be among the most widely liked movies, and in the current preferential ballot system the Academy has that could be a major factor in boosting its chances in Best Picture if it wants to find a way to being the spoiler against the giant that is Oppenheimer. Both Paul Giamatti and Da’Vine Joy Randolph will breeze to a nomination this week and have made major cases that they are favorites in their respective categories. We’ve even started to see it get to a point where Alexander Payne could find a spot in Best Director, when that felt way more unlikely the last time we did this exercise in December.
It is still a longshot to win Best Picture in a couple months on Oscar Night, but it does appear right now that The Holdovers has done more than any other movie this awards season in boosting its case due to the reaction it has gotten widely across the industry and it should be treated like a potential player.
STOCK DOWN: MAY DECEMBER
A month ago, I would have told you that May December was among the seven or eight movies I would have considered to be lock for a Best Picture nomination. But now as we’re just a mere hours from finding out what made the cut, it looks likely that it could find itself on the outside looking in.
It was super strong among critics groups, with nominations for all three of its lead performers, as well as Samy Burch’s original screenplay. But now even some of the nominations we thought were looking the most likely — primarily Charles Melton and Julianne Moore in Supporting Actor and Supporting Actress, respectively — might not happen. There’s still a good chance it has a great day on Tuesday morning, but this seems like we could end up looking back at it as one of those Oscar contenders that were really beloved by critics all year, but just didn’t get that same love from Academy voters.
STOCK DOWN: MAESTRO
This has been a weird and fascinating saga to follow throughout the past few months as people seem to be really looking negatively at Maestro, and primarily its director and star Bradley Cooper’s Oscar campaign with the film. A lot of people are viewing it as purely a vanity project aimed at garnering Academy Awards, which is kind of a bummer for a film that took a lot of risks and didn’t do the normal things that a typical biopic of a musical icon does.
Ultimately, I think on Oscar nomination day Maestro is going to be fine. It should be able to be penciled in for nominations for Best Picture, Actress, Actor, Original Screenplay, Cinematography, Makeup and Hairstyling, and Sound. And that’s a great day. Where the Stock Down really comes in here is that it really looks like it’s becoming unlikely that many of those nominations translate into wins as we look as the way all of the races have started to take shape.
OSCAR RACE 2024: CURRENT BEST PICTURE TOP 10 (AS OF JANUARY 18)
- Oppenheimer
- The Holdovers
- Poor Things
- Killers of the Flower Moon
- Barbie
- American Fiction
- Past Lives
- Anatomy of a Fall
- Maestro
- The Zone of Interest
First four out: May December, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, The Color Purple, All of Us Strangers
The 96th Academy Awards will take place on March 10, 2024 at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. Read our first article in the Stock Up / Stock Down series, where we talked about the first stage of the nominations!
