On Thursday morning (23rd January 2025, 5:30AM PT/8:30AM ET/1:30PM GMT), the nominations for the 97th Academy Awards will be announced. This year, the honour of announcing the nominations falls to Rachel Sennott (Bodies Bodies Bodies, Saturday Night, Bottoms) and Bowen Yang (Wicked, Saturday Night Live, Fire Island).
Due to the Los Angeles wildfires, the nominations announcement had been postponed twice; originally due on Friday 17th January, they were moved to Sunday 19th January, then moved again to this Thursday.
Since 2003, I have tried to predict who will be nominated in several of the major categories (Best Picture, Best Director and the four acting awards). Below is my list of who I think will be named.
BEST PICTURE
A Complete Unknown
Anora
The Brutalist
Conclave
Dune: Part Two
Emilia Pérez
Nickel Boys
Sing Sing
The Substance
Wicked
BEST DIRECTOR
Jacques Audiard (Emilia Pérez)
Sean Baker (Anora)
Edward Berger (Conclave)
Brady Corbet (The Brutalist)
Coralie Fargeat (The Substance)
BEST ACTOR
Adrien Brody (The Brutalist)
Timothée Chalamet (A Complete Unknown)
Daniel Craig (Queer)
Colman Domingo (Sing Sing)
Ralph Fiennes (Conclave)
BEST ACTRESS
Pamela Anderson (The Last Showgirl)
Cynthia Erivo (Wicked)
Karla Sofía Gascón (Emilia Pérez)
Mikey Madison (Anora)
Demi Moore (The Substance)
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Yura Borisov (Anora)
Kieran Culkin (A Real Pain)
Edward Norton (A Complete Unknown)
Guy Pearce (The Brutalist)
Jeremy Strong (The Apprentice)
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Jamie Lee Curtis (The Last Showgirl)
Danielle Deadwyler (The Piano Lesson)
Ariana Grande-Butera (Wicked)
Isabella Rossellini (Conclave)
Zoe Saldaña (Emilia Pérez)
As we now have 10 Best Picture nominees (in addition to the 20 for acting and 5 for directing), I will be happy with any score over 20. Last year, it was 29/35 (83%)
I'm confident with eight of my Best Picture choices. There's a chance that September 5 and/or A Real Pain could get a nomination; if that does happen, then it's Sing Sing and/or Nickel Boys which would lose out.
With Best Director, I'm confident on four of my choices, with a question mark over Coralie Fargeat. The DGA threw a bit of a curveball nominating James Mangold (A Complete Unknown), and Denis Villeneuve has stayed in the conversation with his nominations for Dune: Part Two at both BAFTA and the Critics' Choice Awards. We all know the Academy's (perceived?) snobbishness towards genre films, specifically horror, so they may be reticent to award it to Fargeat. Hell, they might go completely left-field and nominate Jon M. Chu for Wicked and give us all a shock!
With Best Actor, my only query would be Daniel Craig. He might lose out to either Sebastian Stan (The Apprentice) or to Hugh Grant (Heretic). Of the two, I'd hope it would be Hugh Grant who gets the nod, not just for "Brit solidarity" but also because it would negate my need to have to see a film about the convicted felon who's currently taken up residence in the White House. I might end up having to see it anyway for Jeremy Strong's performance (if my predictions come true), but at least then I could skip any scenes he's not in.
In my mind, there's a solid core of four actresses for Best Actress (Erivo, Gascón, Madison, and Moore) with a fifth place to be filled. I've gone with Pamela Anderson, given her nod at the SAG Awards - plus there's something quite poetically beautiful about having two major stars of the 1990s getting a return to the limelight despite having been previously dismissed as "popcorn actresses" and (slightly unfairly) derided at the Razzies - but it could easily be either Marianne Jean-Baptiste (Hard Truths), Angelina Jolie (Maria) or Fernanda Torres (I'm Still Here).
In the run for Best Supporting Actor, I can safely tie on three nods (Borisov, Culkin, Norton). The rest of the field has been very fluid, so it wouldn't be beyond the realms of possibility to see Clarence "Divine Eye" Maclin (Sing Sing), Denzel Washington (Gladiator II) or maybe even Jonathan Bailey (Wicked) getting nominated.
For Best Supporting Actress, I'm only really confident about two nods: Ariana Grande-Butera and Zoe Saldaña. I loved Conclave, so I'm probably a bit biased but I'd love to see Isabella Rossellini get her first Oscar nod for playing the stoic Sister Agnes. I'm following SAG's nominations in my choices for Jamie Lee Curtis and Danielle Deadwyler, although they also pulled a wildcard by their nomination of Monica Barbaro for playing Joan Baez in A Complete Unknown. She may still get the Oscar nod, with Selena Gomez (Emilia Pérez), Felicity Jones (The Brutalist), and Margaret Qualley (The Substance) all part of the conversation and all receiving multiple nominations from other awards bodies.
We might be in for some "upsets", some "snubs" and some "shut-outs" on Thursday morning. But that's all part of the fun of awards season. Plus it's a nice little distraction from *gestures wildly" all of this.
As usual, I'll get a post up as soon as I can on Thursday afternoon with the official nominations.
But before we get there, there's a nifty little stop ahead and time for some puncturing of Hollywood egos (which may or may not be deserved) with the Razzie Award nominations due tomorrow (Wednesday 22nd January).
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