Our 2024 Oscars predictions for every category

The nominees:

• Bradley Cooper, Maestro
• Colman Domingo, Rustin
• Paul Giamatti, The Holdovers
• Cillian Murphy, Oppenheimer
• Jeffrey Wright, American Fiction

Predicted winner: Cillian Murphy

For a while it looked like Cillian Murphy and Paul Giamatti were running neck and neck, for two very different kinds of performances in two very different films. Murphy’s subdued, inward-looking portrayal of the title character in Oppenheimer stands in stark contrast to Giamatti’s brusque history professor in The Holdovers. The other actors in this category all deserve to be here, but this was largely a two-man race until recently. Once Murphy took the BAFTA and the SAG Award it started to look like he might have this category sewn up.

The nominees:

• Sterling K. Brown, American Fiction
• Robert De Niro, Killers Of The Flower Moon
• Robert Downey Jr., Oppenheimer
• Ryan Gosling, Barbie
• Mark Ruffalo, Poor Things

Predicted winner: Robert Downey Jr., Oppenheimer

There are a lot of worthy actors in this category, too, but much less guesswork involved. Robert Downey Jr. has won pretty much every major precursor leading up to the Oscars and we have no reason to believe that streak will end in disappointment. He’s been a delight to watch this awards season, giving lively, self-aware acceptance speeches reminding everyone just how far he’s come. He understands the importance of establishing a campaign narrative, and how much Academy voters love a comeback story. While we loved every single thing Ryan Gosling did as Ken in Barbie, and Sterling K. Brown’s startling range in American Fiction, and Mark Ruffalo’s puffed up buffoonery in Poor Things, and Robert De Niro proving why he’s still one of the greatest living actors we have, we believe it will be Downey’s performance as acerbic Rear Admiral Lewis Strauss that will be singled out on Oscar night.

The nominees:

• Annette Bening, Nyad
• Lily Gladstone, Killers Of The Flower Moon
• Sandra Hüller, Anatomy Of A Fall
• Carey Mulligan, Maestro
• Emma Stone, Poor Things

Predicted winner: Lily Gladstone, Killers Of The Flower Moon

Similar to the Best Actor race, this category has come down to two very strong competitors in the final stretch. But while we think a frontrunner has finally emerged there, this one’s still stubbornly tough to call. Will the Academy give it to Emma Stone for creating a fascinating character whose development and evolution are expressed to the audience through her unique physicality and speech patterns? Or will it go to Lily Gladstone, the sympathetic beating heart of Killers Of The Flower Moon? If Stone wins we wouldn’t call it an upset, but we think Gladstone has a slight edge here. She’s already won several awards, including the SAG Award, which means she’s the favorite among her peers in the acting branch. Giving her that historic win as the first Indigenous performer to win Best Actress and the first Native American person to win an acting Oscar would be a statement, one we don’t think the members of the Academy are going to pass up.

The nominees:

• Emily Blunt, Oppenheimer
• Danielle Brooks, The Color Purple
• America Ferrera, Barbie
• Jodie Foster, Nyad
• Da’Vine Joy Randolph, The Holdovers

Predicted winner: Da’Vine Joy Randolph

If there is one category that’s a lock this year, it’s Best Supporting Actress. We can safely put all our chips on Da’Vine Joy Randolph for The Holdovers, as she’s won this award pretty consistently this season wherever she’s been nominated. And she deserved it for her heartbreaking performance as Mary, a grieving mother just trying to get through the holidays while she’s stuck cooking for a curmudgeonly professor and a wayward student at a New England boarding school. None of the other performers in this category can hope to overcome the momentum Randolph has coming into Oscar weekend.

The nominees:

• The Boy And The Heron
• Elemental
• Nimona
• Robot Dreams
• Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse

Predicted winner: The Boy And The Heron

Last year at this time we’d have predicted that Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse would swing away with the Oscar for Animated Feature Film at the 96th Academy Awards. Oh right, we did. But we kind of forgot to take into account the film that was supposed to be a swan song for legendary director Hayao Miyazaki (and now might not actually be his last after all). Even if he does go on to make more films, each Miyazaki release is a special work of art, and this one is no different. The narratively dense, semi-autobiographical feature is a showcase for all the things he does best—gorgeous scenery and distinctive characters that transport you to a new and fantastical world. If it has a close competitor, it’s Across The Spider-Verse, a mixed-media celebration of the art of animation itself. But we think the fact that it’s the second of a trilogy might make the difference and allow it to be overtaken by The Boy And The Heron.

The nominees:

• El Conde
• Killers Of The Flower Moon
• Maestro
• Oppenheimer
• Poor Things

Predicted winner: Oppenheimer

Cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema has worked with Christopher Nolan on several past projects, including Interstellar, Tenet, and Dunkirk, which earned him his first Oscar nomination (he lost that year to Roger Deakins for Blade Runner 2049). We predict this year’s Oppenheimer wave will take him along with it to his first win (none of the nominees in this category have won before, so whoever takes it will be a first timer). The film’s striking visuals in both color and black are one of its most distinctive features, so even if Oppenheimer weren’t the film to beat this year, we’d still be predicting a win here.

The nominees:

• Barbie
• Killers Of The Flower Moon
• Napoleon
• Oppenheimer
• Poor Things

Predicted winner: Barbie

This the first of several direct match-ups in the technical categories that come down to a battle between Barbie and Poor Things. May the best movie about a damaged plaything striving to become a real girl win. It was close, but we’re going with Barbie in this category based on the sheer volume of amazing designs in the film, many of them painstakingly recreated life-sized versions of Barbie’s signature outfits. It was tempting to pick Poor Things based on the Academy’s history of awarding period pieces (we’re still not over those intentionally missewn puff sleeves), but importance of fashion in Barbie’s world puts it over the top for us.

The nominees:

• Justine Triet, Anatomy Of A Fall
• Martin Scorsese, Killers Of The Flower Moon
• Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer
• Yorgos Lanthimos, Poor Things
• Jonathan Glazer, The Zone Of Interest

Predicted winner: Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer

We sincerely hope that Christopher Nolan is at home practicing his acceptance speech right now. Or maybe he’s already got it nailed by this point. It was only a matter of time before he got around to making a movie the Academy couldn’t deny, and all signs are pointing to Oppenheimer being the movie that gets him his first Oscar. We pretty much knew that as soon as we walked out of the theater last July, and nothing that’s happened since has changed our minds. There are a lot of talented directors in this category with very distinctive styles, but we firmly believe this award is Nolan’s to lose.

The nominees:

• Bobi Wine: The People’s President
• The Eternal Memory
• Four Daughters
• To Kill A Tiger
• 20 Days In Mariupol

Predicted winner: 20 Days In Mariupol

All of the documentaries nominated this year are international productions, and all deal with important subject matter, including political conflict, oppression, and activists fighting for justice no matter the cost. A win for any one of them would make a powerful statement, but 20 Days In Mariupol is an astonishing achievement in documentary filmmaking. Shot from inside the Ukrainian city as it was under siege by Russian forces, its a devastating immediacy is a grim reminder that the war still rages on.

The nominees:

• “The ABCs Of Book Banning”
• “The Barber Of Little Rock”
• “Island In Between”
• “The Last Repair Shop”
• “Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó”

Predicted winner: “The Last Repair Shop”

While this year’s nominated documentary features all tackle heavy subjects, there’s more of a mix in the short category. Some of them are more issue-oriented, like “The ABC’s Of Book Banning” and “Island In Between.” Others, like “Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó,” in which the director follows around his adorable Chinese grandmothers, are more feel-good. “The Last Repair Shop” is a good mix of both. It centers on a 64-year-old LAUSD repair shop that fixes school instruments for music students at no cost. We meet the technicians who work on the instruments as well as the students who benefit from their work. It’s all very uplifting. Arts in education for the win.

The nominees:

• Anatomy Of A Fall
• The Holdovers
• Killers Of The Flower Moon
• Oppenheimer
• Poor Things

Predicted winner: Oppenheimer

With apologies to Martin Scorsese’s editor of choice, the great Thelma Schoonmaker, we don’t see any way this award is going to anyone other than Jennifer Lame for Oppenheimer. She previously worked with Nolan on Tenet, and actually agreed to work with him again after that, so she knew what she was in for with Oppenheimer. The parallel narrative between the different eras of his life must have made for another interesting challenge. We’re fully expecting to add this win to the film’s growing tally.

The nominees:

• Io Capitano
• Perfect Days
• Society Of The Snow
• The Teachers’ Lounge
• The Zone Of Interest

Predicted winner: The Zone Of Interest

France made a calculated gamble by not submitting Anatomy Of A Fall in this category, hoping that it would leave room for The Taste Of Things to make it in while Anatomy Of A Fall eyed bigger prizes. That risk didn’t pay off for the French, but it left the United Kingdom’s The Zone Of Interest in a prime position. It could have been an interesting showdown, but oh well. As it stands now, The Zone Of Interest is the only nominee in this category that was also nominated for Best Picture, so it’s a safe bet to win.

The nominees:

• Golda
• Maestro
• Oppenheimer
• Poor Things
• Society Of The Show

Predicted winner: Poor Things

You may be wondering, as we were, where Barbie is in this category. We would have thought it was the kind of below-the-line technical award that might make up for the lack of wins elsewhere. With it out of contention the strongest likely contenders here are Maestro and Poor Things. There’s a chance the Oppenheimer surge could sweep through this category as well, but we think the voters will go with a more showy choice. This could be the only shot Maestro has at winning anything, though all that controversy over Bradley Cooper’s face prosthetics might hurt it. That leaves Poor Things, and we feel pretty good about that. I could win based on Willem Dafoe’s makeup alone.

The nominees:

• Laura Karpman, American Fiction
• John Williams, Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny
• Robbie Robertson, Killers Of The Flower Moon
• Ludwig Göransson, Oppenheimer
• Jerskin Fendrix, Poor Things

Predicted winner: Ludwig Göransson, Oppenheimer

The ever present score for Oppenheimer is absolutely essential to the experience of watching the film, so we believe that gives Ludwig Göransson the advantage here. Fellow nominee John Williams has been nominated 54 times (yes, fifty four, that’s not a typo) now, but he’s only actually one five Oscars, so he’s used to seeing it go to someone else. Despite the potential of honoring Robbie Robertson with a posthumous award, the real spoiler in this category is first-time film composer Jerskin Fendrix, whose discordant score for Poor Things plays such an important part in setting the film’s disquieting tone. That said, we still think this one is going to Göransson.

The nominees:

• “The Fire Inside” from Flamin’ Hot
• “I’m Just Ken” from Barbie
• “It Never Went Away” from American Symphony
• “Wahzhazhe (A Song For My People)“ from Killers Of The Flower Moon
• “What Was I Made For?” from Barbie

Predicted winner: “What Was I Made For?” from Barbie

This is one category where Barbie is almost guaranteed to win an Oscar, based on the odds alone. It has two solid nominees here, double the chances of any of the others. The real question is whether it will be Billie Eilish’s dreamy ballad “What Was I Made For?” or Ryan Gosling’s comedic lament “I’m Just Ken.” As much as we want to give it to Ken, and we can’t wait to see Gosling perform the song on stage at the ceremony, we think it’s going to go to Eilish and her brother and collaborator Finneas O’Connell. Never mind that it would be the second Oscar for the 22-year-old musician, after winning for “No Time to Die” in 2022, the song is just too good to ignore.

The nominees:

• Barbie
• Killers Of The Flower Moon
• Napoleon
• Oppenheimer
• Poor Things

Predicted winner: Poor Things

Here’s another Barbie and Poor Things showdown, but while we predicted the award for Best Costumes would go to Barbie, we’re picking Poor Things as the winner here, by a very close margin. If the academy is looking for places where it can honor Poor Things, this is a good choice. The elaborate, surreal, steampunk-inspired sets and scenery distance the film and the audience from reality, differentiating it from anything else released this year. Production designers James Price and Shona Heath, plus set decorator Zsuzsa Mihalek, have pretty short resumes when it comes to working on major features, but they will certainly be talents to watch in the future.

The nominees:

• “Letter To A Pig”
• “Ninety-Five Senses”
• “Our Uniform”
• “Pachyderme”
• “War Is Over! Inspired By The Music Of John & Yoko”

Predicted winner: “War Is Over! Inspired By The Music Of John & Yoko”

Without an entry from Pixar or Disney this year, it’s a wide open field for Best Animated Short Film. There’s such an eclectic mix of styles and tones in these shorts that it doesn’t seem right to pit them against each other. But there must be a winner, so we predict the voters will go with the names they know and choose “War Is Over! Inspired By The Music Of John & Yoko.” In terms of true artistry, “Letter To A Pig,” which deals with the themes of trauma and memory in relation to the Holocaust, is more innovative and well made, but we have to take into account the fact that a lot of voters might not have seen all the nominated shorts.

The nominees:

• “The After”
• “Invincible”
• “Knight Of Fortune”
• “Red, White And Blue”
• “The Wonderful Story Of Henry Sugar”

Predicted winner: “The Wonderful Story Of Henry Sugar”

There’s an opportunity here to give Wes Anderson an award for something other than Asteroid City, and we thing the Academy will take it. For those who find his style of filmmaking grating after a while, “The Wonderful Story Of Henry Sugar” is a smaller and more easily digested morsel of a film that runs just under 40 minutes. Plus it has a cast of familiar faces, including Benedict Cumberbatch, Ralph Fiennes, Dev Patel, and Ben Kingsley. Don’t underestimate the value of a name voters can recognized in the shorts categories. In 2022, Riz Ahmed won for his short “The Long Goodbye.” Considering Anderson has never really been an Oscar darling in the past, this might be his best chance to win one.

The nominees:

• The Creator
• Maestro
• Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One
• Oppenheimer
• The Zone Of Interest

Predicted winner: The Zone Of Interest

This would be a pretty boring category, and one that we’d easily call as another in the win column for Oppenheimer, if it weren’t for the presence of The Zone Of Interest among the nominees. Sound design is everything in this film. It’s absolutely integral to its message. The film follows a German family as they go about their daily lives in their home outside the gates of the Auschwitz. We never see what’s going on inside the concentration camp, but we can hear it, and we know what it means. The presence of that eerie soundscape implicates the characters as well as the audience in tuning it out. This category usually goes to big, bombastic films, and Oppenheimer certainly qualifies as that, but this film represents a different way to use sound for maximum narrative impact.

The nominees:

• The Creator
• Godzilla Minus One
• Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3
• Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One
• Napoleon

Predicted winner: Godzilla Minus One

We’re already written about the reasons why we think Godzilla Minus One could, and should, win an Oscar. What writer-director-VFX supervisor Takashi Yamazaki and his team accomplished on a budget of $10-15 million through cooperation and ingenuity is remarkable. Even The Creator, with its comparatively modest cost (for Hollywood, at least) of $80 million doesn’t come close to giving the same level of bang for its buck. As for the rest of this year’s Oscar nominees in the category, Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3, Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning Part 1, and Napoleon, they’re all spectacular in their own ways, but if you take economy and efficiency into account, none of them can touch Godzilla Minus One.

The nominees:

• Cord Jefferson, American Fiction
• Greta Gerwig & Noah Baumbach, Barbie
• Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer
• Tony McNamara, Poor Things
• Jonathan Glazer, The Zone Of Interest

Predicted winner: Cord Jefferson, American Fiction

This category may be stacked with heavy hitters, but when it comes to writing we predict it will come down to American Fiction. Last year, the Academy gave the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay to Sarah Polley for Women Talking, the only award it received that night. So there’s precedent for giving this to a respected film that doesn’t have a chance anywhere else. That certainly helps make the case for Cord Jefferson (a former Gawker editor, we must note) and his BAFTA-winning adaptation of Percival Everett’s novel Erasure, but his sharp dialogue, fully dimensional characters, and engaging storytelling speak for themselves.

The nominees:

• Justine Triet and Arthur Harari, Anatomy Of A Fall
• David Hemingson, The Holdovers
• Bradley Cooper & Josh Singer, Maestro
• Samy Burch & Alex Mechanik, May December
• Celine Song, Past Lives

Predicted winner: Justine Triet and Arthur Harari, Anatomy Of A Fall

Though The Holdovers and Past Lives are sentimental favorites, we think Golden Globe winner Anatomy Of A Fall has the strongest, and most original, script of the five nominated in this category. It’s got the skin of a courtroom drama and the bones of a murder mystery, but it’s so much more than that. Since its first screened in front of an audience at Cannes last May, where it won the Palme d’Or, it has only grown in popularity. That should at least get it over the line in this category, if it doesn’t win anywhere else.

The nominees:

• American Fiction
• Anatomy Of A Fall
• Barbie
• The Holdovers
• Killers Of The Flower Moon
• Maestro
• Oppenheimer
• Past Lives
• Poor Things
• The Zone Of Interest

Predicted winner: Oppenheimer

Is there any doubt that Oppenheimer is taking this Oscar home? None in our minds. Looking over this list, it’s a nice reminder that 2023 was a very good year for movies, and for once there’s not a single nominee that we don’t think shouldn’t be here. But yeah, we think it’s safe to tell Kitty to bring in the laundry.