27 Jul Late July Oscar Predictions 2025
With trailer drops and festival announcements, the last few weeks have been rife with new information to help us predict who will see themselves carrying a golden statue in March.
Trailers for Anora, Conclave, Gladiator II, A Complete Unknown, and Joker: Folie a Deux released, elevating the profile of all of those films. Anora was also announced as a selection at the Toronto Film Festival this year, following the path of past NEON Palme D’Or winners Parasite and Anatomy of a Fall. Both those films won Oscars and I already think Anora is the frontrunner in Original Screenplay this year. I think Anora is inevitably going to be a top three contender. It’s a Palme D’Or winner, a film from one of the best up-and-coming American filmmakers of the last ten years who has to yet to break out with the Academy, and contains commentary on gender and class. It’s a potential winner and especially since there usually is a film that can be called a comedy in the top-four of the Oscar Best Picture slate, Anora’s spot in the year’s top contenders seems pretty secure to me.
Conclave was also announced as a TIFF selection this year and with its trailer containing many references to the current American political situation, this film seems like it could have that combination of critical acclaim and “importance” that characterizes Best Picture winners since Spotlight. It’s also being released on November 8th, three days after election day in the United States, and it looks like Focus Features is already centering the film’s political allegory in its campaign for the film.
Trailers for Gladiator II, A Complete Unknown, and Joker: Folie a Deux also dropped. Gladiator II’s trailer was good, but not good enough to diminish my suspicions about its quality. Ridley Scott has been in a slump as of late and the film’s writer David Scarpa has been behind two of Scott’s recent missteps Napoleon and All the Money in the World. However, the trailer made a good case for Denzel Washington. If the movie is a Best Picture nominee contender, I would be surprised if Washington isn’t a top three Supporting Actor contender. A Complete Unknown’s teaser trailer featured a Timothee Chalamet who has done a pretty good job of matching Bob Dylan’s singing voice. The film is definitely Searchlight’s biggest player and Searchlight almost always gets at least one of its films into Best Picture. A Complete Unknown could very likely follow the path of Bohemian Rhapsody and Elvis, two other music biopics with ok-not-great reviews that catapulted its lead to being a top-two Best Actor contender. Like with Gladiator 2, I am similarly skeptical about Joker 2. Maybe I am just a naysayer, but I don’t know if Todd Phillips can strike the same Oscar lightning twice. Warner Bros. submitting the film for Venice in competition, following the example of the first film which won the Golden Lion there back in 2019, is a move that may indicate their confidence in the film’s quality.
Nickel Boys and Blitz were announced as the opening and closing films of the New York Film Festival, respectively and we could see a repeat of 2018 and 2019’s festival where two of the three films that made the Opening, Centerpiece, and Closing films of the festival were nominated for Best Picture. Nickel Boys is exactly the kind of film that if critically-acclaimed, can be a top six Best Picture contender. I think its ceiling would be either a Supporting Actress win for Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor or an Adapted Screenplay win. However, if it has a Metascore lower than 75, I could see it missing in the wake of one of Joker: Folie a Deux, The Piano Lesson, The Room Next Door, Hard Truths, The Seed of the Sacred Fig making it in. Blitz is Steve McQueen’s first theatrically-released feature film since his Best Picture winning 12 Years a Slave back in 2013. It’s starring Saoirse Ronan, Harris Dickinson, Stephen Graham and follows a group of Londoners during World War II. It’s the kind of film that if well-received can be a top-five Picture contender and rack up nods both above and below the line, but I don’t see it winning Picture or more than a couple statues.
Venice released its slate for this year as well and of the films announced, Luca Guadagnino’s Queer, Todd Phillips’ Joker: Folie a Deux, and Pedro Almodovar’s The Room Next Door are the most likely to be Best Picture nominees. I expect there to be one or two films from this year’s Venice slate that make it into Best Picture and while Queer seems the most likely to me, if The Room Next Door is one of Almodovar’s top four films, I could see it making Picture.
BEST PICTURE
Anora (NEON)
Conclave (Focus)
Blitz (Apple TV+)
Dune: Part Two (Warner Bros.)
Emilia Perez (Netflix)
A Complete Unknown (Searchlight)
Sing Sing (A24)
Gladiator II (Paramount)
Queer (N/A)
Nickel Boys (AmazonMGM)
Could Jump In: Joker: Folie a Deux (Warner Bros.), The Piano Lesson (Netflix), The Room Next Door (Sony Classics), Hard Truths (Bleecker Street), The Seed of the Sacred Fig (NEON), Nightbitch (Searchlight), A Real Pain (Searchlight), Didi (Focus), We Live in Time (A24), Challengers (AmazonMGM), Nosferatu (Focus), Here (TriStar), Wicked (Universal)
BEST DIRECTOR
Sean Baker – Anora
Steve McQueen – Blitz
Denis Villenueve – Dune: Part Two
Jacques Audiard – Emilia Perez
Luca Guadagnino – Queer
Could Jump In: Edward Berger – Conclave, Pedro Almodovar – The Room Next Door, Greg Kwedar, Sing Sing, Mile Leigh – Hard Truths, Ridley Scott – Gladiator II, Marielle Heller – Nightbitch, RaMell Ross – Nickel Boys
BEST ACTOR
Colman Domingo – Sing Sing
Timothee Chalamet – A Complete Unknown
Ralph Fiennes – Conclave
Daniel Craig – Queer
Paul Mescal – Gladiator II
Could Jump In: John David Washington – The Piano Lesson, Joaquin Phoenix – Joker: Folie a Deux, Sebastian Stan – A Different Man, Jesse Eisenberg – A Real Pain, Ethan Herisse – Nickel Boys, Andrew Garfield – We Live in Time
BEST ACTRESS
Angelina Jolie – Maria
Mikey Madison – Anora
Karla Sofia Gascon – Emilia Perez
Saoirse Ronan – Blitz
Amy Adams – Nightbitch
Could Jump In: Julianne Moore or Tilda Swinton – The Room Next Door, Marianne Jean-Baptiste – Hard Truths, Lady Gaga – Joker: Floie a Deux, Natasha Lyonne – His Three Daughters, Zendaya – Challengers, Florence Pugh – We Live in Time
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Samuel L. Jackson – The Piano Lesson
Clarence Maclin – Sing Sing
Denzel Washington – Gladiator II
Stanley Tucci – Conclave
Stephen Graham – Blitz
Could Jump In: Kieran Culkin – A Real Pain, Harris Dickinson – Blitz, John Lithgow – Conclave, Mark Eydelshteyn – Anora
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor – Nickel Boys
Zoe Saldana – Emilia Perez
Danielle Deadwyler – The Piano Lesson
Isabella Rossellini – Conclave
Tilda Swinton – The Room Next Door
Could Jump In: Joan Chen – Didi, Toni Colette – Juror #2, Lesley Manville – Queer, Carrie Coon or Elisabeth Olsen – His Three Daughters
BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Anora
Blitz
The Room Next Door
Hard Truths
A Real Pain
Could Jump In: Emilia Perez, The Seed of the Sacred Fig, Challengers, Kinds of Kindness, Didi, Civil War
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
Conclave
Queer
Sing Sing
Nickel Boys
The Piano Lesson
Could Jump In: Nightbitch, Dune: Part Two, Joker: Folie a Deux, A Complete Unknown, Here
BEST ANIMATED FEATURE
Inside Out 2
The Wild Robot
Mufasa: The Lion King
Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl
Flow
Could Jump In: Moana 2, Ultraman: Rising
BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN
Dune: Part Two
Gladiator 2
Blitz
Furiosa
Nickel Boys
Could Jump In: Joker 2. Maria, Conclave, Emilia Perez
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
Dune: Part Two
Furiosa
Queer
Gladiator 2
Nosferatu
Could Jump In: Maria, Emilia Perez, Nickel Boys
BEST COSTUME DESIGN
Dune: Part Two
Blitz
Gladiator 2
Furiosa
Maria
Could Jump In: Wicked, Nosferatu, Joker 2, Nickel Boys
BEST FILM EDITING
Dune: Part Two
Blitz
Anora
Gladiator 2
Emilia Perez
Could Jump In: Conclave, Joker 2, The Fire Inside
BEST MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING
Dune: Part Two
Furiosa
Nosferatu
Joker 2
Wicked
Could Jump In: Maria, Gladiator 2, Nickel Boys
BEST SOUND
Dune: Part Two
Furiosa
Blitz
Gladiator 2
Joker 2
Could Jump In: Emilia Perez, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, Wicked
BEST VISUAL EFFECTS
Dune: Part Two
Mufasa: The Lion King
Furiosa
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes
Wicked
BEST ORIGINAL SCORE
Dune: Part Two
Gladiator 2
Queer
Mufasa: The Lion King
Conclave
Could Jump In: Maria, Joker: Folie a Deux, Sing Sing, The Room Next Door, Challengers