Top Picture Predictions – IndieWire

Voting for nominations January 11-16, 2024. takes place between, the official Oscar nominations will be announced on January 23, 2024. The final vote is February 22-27, 2024. We’ll be updating predictions throughout awards season, so keep checking IndieWire for our 2024 Oscars picks.

State of the species

As usual, big-budget projects have the marketing and awareness to build their way to the Oscars. Check out the two summer movies, Christopher Nolan’s hard-hitting biopic “Oppenheimer” (Universal), starring Cillian Murphy, Matt Damon and Robert Downey, Jr. as they chase Oscars, and Greta Gerwig’s pastel-pink Mattel extravaganza “Barbie” (Warner Bros.), starring Gogot Robbie Conte and Margot Robbie. Both films received critical raves and increased coverage as their studios avoided selling the films (and turning off mainstream audiences) through their festival cred.

Amazon and MGM Press SXSW Opener and ‘Argo’ Best Picture Award Ben Affleck it was well received Sports drama “Air,” despite its $90 million budget being far from a blockbuster. But if the older male Academy demo likes a streaming movie looking for marketing, does that matter?

Of course, many festival films will build enough prestige for the Oscar race. A24, which has several Oscar wins after “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” will be at Sundance. critical Directed by Korean-American playwright Celine Song, “Past Lives” is about a married New York writer (Greta Lee) who reunites with her Korean childhood sweetheart (Teo Yoo). The film will cross $10 million at the domestic box office, which is difficult to achieve these days.

It’s rare, but possible, for a film by a first-time director to win Best Picture: see stage directors Delbert Mann (“Marty,” 1955) and Sam Mendes (“American Beauty,” 1999). “Terms of Endearment” (1983) director James L. Brooks came from television, and two film star newcomer directors, Robert Redford (“Ordinary People”, 1980) and Kevin Costner (“Dances with Wolves”, 1990) received the Oscar for best picture. The song is in progress.

Cannes launched Oscar winner Martin Scorsese’s “The Departed” into competition with the western epic “Killers of the Flower Moon” (AppleTV+/Paramount), starring Best Actor winner Leonardo DiCaprio (“The Revenant”), Robert De Niro (“The Godfather Part II” and “Raging Bull”) and Lily Risingstone Breakout. and Todd Haynes with “May December” (Netflix), a fictional true story starring Oscar winners Julianne Moore (“Alice”) and Natalie Portman (“Black Swan”), which opens the New York Film Festival on September 29. director and won four craft Oscars.

British writer Jonathan Glazer won the German-language dark Holocaust film “Zone of Interest” (A24) with German actress Sandra Hüller (Oscar-nominated international feature film “Toni Erdmann”), who also stars in French director Justine Triet’s (Palme d’Or winner Nee Triet), French drama “Fall a Half-Atom”. Will France submit the film? The UK is to submit ‘Zone of Interest’ to the International Feature Film Oscars. In any case, voters at the increasingly international Academy could respond to both films, as they did to “All Quiet on the Western Front,” “The Worst Man in the World,” “Parasite” and “Drive My Car.”

The big question this season is how the ongoing WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes will affect high-profile films hoping to make festival splashes on the way to big openings and Oscar campaigns. Until the actors’ strike is resolved, director-star Bradley Cooper will not be able to promote his second film, “Maestro” (Netflix), in which Leonard Bernstein plays a New York conductor-composer. (The premiere of the film is expected at the New York Film Festival.) At press time, many independent companies were waiting for news about the promotional waves of the autumn festivals.

Denis Villeneuve’s epic sequel, “Dune: Part Two” (Warner Bros.), starring Timothée Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Zendaya and Javier Bardem, is among the films opening at the fall festivals. (That is, if Warner Bros. keeps the 2023 date; a Species According to the report, the studio may postpone “Dune: II. (Part 1) and other films when the SAG-AFTRA strike presumably ends and actors can promote the films again.) Sequels and sci-fi aren’t always accepted Oscars, especially when a trilogy is expected to end definitively, but “Dune Part 1” won a nomination and six 10th.

As always, there will be plenty of biopics competing at the Oscars. Veteran Ridley Scott’s pricey epic “Napoleon” (Apple Original Films/Sony Pictures), Oscar winner Joaquin Phoenix (“The Joker”) and nominee Vanessa Kirby (“Woman Pieces”) are seeing an early buzz. “Priscilla” (A24) stars Oscar winner Sofia Coppola (“Lost in Translation”) as Jacob Elordi as Elvis alongside Cailee Spaeny (“East Town Mare”) in the title role.

Michael Mann (“The Insider”) will also appear at the fall festivals with the biopic “Ferrari” (Neon), starring Adam Driver, who played an Italian in “House of Gucci” opposite Penélope Cruz. Reinaldo Marcus Green’s follow-up to the Oscar-winning “King Richard” is the biopic “Marley: One Love” (Paramount), starring “One Night in Miami” breakout Kingsley Ben-Adir. Documentary filmmakers Jimmy Chin and Chai Vasarhelyi deal with the life of swimmer Diana Nyad (Annette Bening) in their first fictional appearance, “Nyad” (Netflix).

On the fiction side, Oscar-winning perennial Alexander Payne returns with the Christmas film “The Holdovers” (Focus), reuniting with “Sideways” star Paul Giamatti. Yorgos Lanthimos (“The Favorite”) returns with Emma Stone in the sci-fi romance “Poor Things” (Searchlight), which is expected to play Venice ahead of its Sept. 8 release. In the follow-up to the Oscar-winning film A Young Woman of Promise, Emerald Fennell stars as British upper crust in Saltburn (Amazon Studios), starring Rosamund Pike, Barry Keoghan and Carey Mulligan. Italian director Luca Guadagnino’s “Challengers” (Amazon/MGM) is a tennis world romantic triangle starring Zendaya, Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist.

The reaction of the festival can determine the fate of several films. Oscar winner Ethan Coen (“No Country for Old Men”) directs the caper “Drive Away Dolls” (Focus) solo, without usual partner Joel. The Academy’s lack of adherence to certain genres may affect the reception of David Fincher’s thriller “The Killer” (Netflix), in which Michael Fassbender plays a threatened assassin, and Jeff Nichols’ motorcycle road movie “Bikeriders” (20th Century Studios), starring Tom Hardy and Austin Butler.

Possible candidates are listed in alphabetical order; no movie is considered a frontrunner until we’ve seen it.

They are cutting edge

“Air”
“Anatomy of a Fall”
“Asteroid City”
“Barbie”
“Killers of the Flower Moon”
“Oppenheimer”
“Past Lives”

Competitors

“Bikers”
“Challengers”
“Take the Babies”
“Dune: Part Two”
“Ferrari”
“The Retainers”
“The Killer”
“Master”
“Marley: One Love”
“May December”
“Napoleon”
“Poor Things”
“Priscilla”
“salt burn”
“Zone of interest”