Final 2024 Oscar Predictions: Best Picture and Best Director

06 Mar Final 2024 Oscar Predictions: Best Picture and Best Director

BEST PICTURE

I love it when the biggest award of the night is the easiest to predict. Christopher Nolan, a beloved auteur for over a decade has made his foray into an Academy favorite: the historical biopic. Not only did Oppenheimer become the highest grossing historical biopic of all time worldwide, but the film also became the second highest grossing rated R film ever in terms of worldwide box office. When film historians look back on 2023, many will see this past year as the year of Barbenheimer. While both Barbie and Oppenheimer tapped into the cultural zeitgeist in a major way, Oppenheimer was clearly the more critically-acclaimed of the two and the favorite among film aficionados (Oppenheimer has a 4.2 on Letterboxd while Barbie has a 3.9). To many, Oppenheimer was the movie that showed Hollywood that films with serious themes could have major commercial success. For people like Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola, the Barbenheimer phenomena was a cause for optimism for the future of Hollywood cinema. Like Everything Everywhere All at Once last year, Oppenheimer is a sign that auteur-driven dramas can be cultural events and that’s something everyone in Hollywood can get behind.