{"id":456318,"date":"2025-09-27T21:39:19","date_gmt":"2025-09-27T21:39:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/456318\/"},"modified":"2025-09-27T21:39:19","modified_gmt":"2025-09-27T21:39:19","slug":"the-9-biggest-questions-of-the-2026-oscar-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/456318\/","title":{"rendered":"The 9 Biggest Questions of the 2026 Oscar Season"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n \"Gold
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

\n Keeping pace with Hollywood\u2019s perpetual awards horserace. Sign up for the newsletter\u00a0here<\/a>.\n <\/p>\n

\n Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos: Warner Bros. Pictures, Eros Hoagland\/Netflix\n <\/p>\n

The air is getting chilly, the leaves are starting to turn, and Oscar geeks are analyzing the buzz out of Venice, Telluride, and Toronto like tea leaves at the bottom of a mug\u00a0\u2014 that\u2019s right, Oscar season is here. Welcome to another season of Gold Rush, where we\u2019ll be parsing all the narratives, precursor awards, and industry chatter that accompanies the annual competition for the Academy\u2019s favor. We\u2019ll also be tracking who\u2019s up and who\u2019s down in the major categories every week in the Oscar Futures rankings. Those will start next Friday \u2014 for now, let\u2019s talk about the story lines that will shape this year\u2019s awards race. There\u2019s no such thing as winning an Oscar on pure merit; even if it\u2019s only subconsciously, voters consider dozens of things \u2014 a director\u2019s career arc, an actor\u2019s likability, a film\u2019s sense of importance \u2014 over the course of the season before casting their ballots.<\/p>\n

Last year was dominated by, among other things, Neon\u2019s rise to industry prominence with Anora<\/a>, the formal grandeur of The Brutalist<\/a>, the roller coaster of hype and backlash<\/a> that was Emilia P\u00e9rez, and Demi Moore\u2019s career comeback with The Substance<\/a>. This year, we\u2019ve got vampires<\/a>, revolutionaries, maybe-alien CEOs, and Bruce Springsteen, not to mention Elphaba and Galinda putting their friendship to the test. How do we sort it all out? We can start with the big hit of the spring.<\/p>\n

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Photo: Warner Bros.\n <\/p>\n

For months, the only Oscar narrative with any staying power has surrounded Sinners, Ryan Coogler\u2019s juke-joint vampire quasi-musical that blew critics away in April and dazzled audiences to the tune of $278 million domestic. Sinners has a path laid out before it, one potentially similar to Get Out \u2014 another crowd-pleasing work of social commentary from the first third of the year that was able to maintain its momentum and nab a Best Director nomination for an exciting young Black filmmaker.<\/p>\n

But Coogler\u2019s Oscar history warns us not to count our chickens before they hatch. His 2013 debut, Fruitvale Station, got a ton of awards attention at Sundance, particularly for young Michael B. Jordan, but the Weinstein Company dropped the ball when it came to that fall\u2019s Oscar push. Creed, in 2015, brought more rave reviews for Coogler and Jordan, only for the sole awards spotlight to fall on Sylvester Stallone. Black Panther was at last Coogler\u2019s big Oscar hit, scoring a Best Picture nomination and three wins overall \u2026 but neither Coogler (in Best Director) nor Jordan (in Supporting Actor) were nominated.<\/p>\n

So either Sinners will be a long-time-coming breakthrough for Coogler and Jordan \u2026 or the Academy will get squeamish about something. There will be plenty of hairsplitting over what kind of movie Sinners is \u2014 drama? horror? musical? \u2014 and whether it\u2019s too bloody or bold or confrontational in its message about Black culture being co-opted by white business for voters\u2019 tastes. On the bright side, the Academy membership has recently shown itself to be increasingly cool with challenging, genre-bending material, from Everything Everywhere All at Once to Barbie. And in a year when awards expectations have frequently evaporated once people actually started to see the movies, there is great value in one like Sinners, which has already passed the test with critics and audiences.<\/p>\n

With One Battle After Another opening this week, I wrote about<\/a> the Oscar chances for PTA\u2019s latest, which has gone over like gangbusters with critics. There will be plenty of narrative to go around for this movie, from Leonardo DiCaprio pushing for a second Best Actor Oscar to the prospect of Sean Penn getting a third Oscar to the question of which Supporting Actress contender will emerge: the fierce Teyana Taylor or the fresh-faced Chase Infiniti. And that\u2019s not even getting into how the movie\u2019s plot \u2014 set against the backdrop of a white-supremacist American regime and the revolutionary movement determined to fight it \u2014 speaks to this particular moment in America.<\/p>\n

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Photo: Eros Hoagland\/Netflix\n <\/p>\n

As is typical, Netflix enters the fall with more Oscar contenders than any studio would know what to do with. And while everybody assumes it will eventually focus that down to twoish major contenders, the fall festivals didn\u2019t exactly clarify what movies those should be.<\/p>\n

Venice was not kind to either Noah Baumbach\u2019s Jay Kelly or Guillermo del Toro\u2019s Frankenstein. And while the latter did finish as a runner-up for Toronto\u2019s People\u2019s Choice Award (famously, 15 of the previous 17 People\u2019s Choice winners have gone on to a Best Picture nomination), the critical consensus on Frankenstein remains muted apart from praise for Jacob Elordi\u2019s performance as the monster. Jay Kelly seems to be in a better position, as it\u2019s a film about a longtime movie star (George Clooney) reflecting upon his life and choices. \u201cHollywood loves movies about itself\u201d is at this point a clich\u00e9, but that doesn\u2019t make it not true. Even without critical support, Baumbach, Clooney, and co-stars like Adam Sandler and Laura Dern hitting the campaign trail should be enough to keep the movie in the Oscar mix.<\/p>\n

One Netflix movie that did seem to go over well in Venice was Kathryn Bigelow\u2019s A House of Dynamite. Bigelow, the first woman to ever win the Oscar for Best Director, hasn\u2019t been in the Oscar mix since 2012\u2019s Zero Dark Thirty. She\u2019s back with a nerve-jangling war-room thriller about a nuclear missile headed toward the United States. There\u2019s also director Clint Bentley\u2019s Train Dreams, which premiered to great acclaim at Sundance and is the kind of small-yet-exquisite movie that would benefit from a studio that didn\u2019t have three massive Oscar contenders to deal with this fall.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s not all! After consecutive Best Picture nominations for All Quiet on the Western Front and Conclave, director Edward Berger is back with Colin Farrell as a Las Vegas gambler in Ballad of a Small Player. Richard Linklater presents his ode to the French New Wave with Nouvelle Vague. Kate Winslet will sneak her directorial debut in just before the year is over with Goodbye June. And Rian Johnson is back with the latest Benoit Blanc mystery, the TIFF-favorite Wake Up Dead Man. And that\u2019s not even getting into the animated K-Pop Demon Hunters, which is currently the betting favorite to win both Best Animated Feature and Best Original Song.<\/p>\n

Of course, once Netflix decides which movie(s) it will most aggressively push for Oscars, the follow-up question becomes: Can Netflix finally get over the hump and win Best Picture? It\u2019s tough to see a winner in any of its contenders at the moment, but Lord knows the streamer is going to try.<\/p>\n

\"Closing <\/p>\n

Photo: Pascal Le Segretain\/Getty Images\n <\/p>\n

Up until 2019, only two films had ever taken both the Palme d\u2019Or at Cannes and the Best Picture Oscar: 1945\u2019s The Lost Weekend and Marty ten years later. Then came Parasite and last year\u2019s Anora. As the Academy\u2019s membership has grown more international, Cannes has become a much more important factor in the Oscar race than it used to be. Recent Best Picture nominees that debuted at the festival include The Substance, Emilia P\u00e9rez, Anatomy of a Fall, The Zone of Interest, Triangle of Sadness, and Drive My Car, among many others.<\/p>\n

The 2025 festival premiered several compelling contenders. Palme d\u2019Or winner It Was Just an Accident<\/a> comes from renowned Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi, whose personal story of imprisonment and exile from Iran should draw a response from awards voters. Meanwhile, Joachim Trier\u2019s Sentimental Value has been pegged as an Oscar hopeful since it debuted; the director\u2019s last collaboration with star Renate Reinsve, The Worst Person in the World, notched a surprise screenplay nomination in 2021. The film also features a pair of actors who have long eluded Oscar attention \u2014 Stellan Skarsg\u00e5rd and Elle Fanning \u2014 who could be looking at first-time nods.<\/p>\n

Other Cannes titles will contend as their home country\u2019s representative for the Best International Feature Oscar, including Spain\u2019s Sir\u00e2t, Brazil\u2019s The Secret Agent, Germany\u2019s Sound of Falling, and Colombia\u2019s A Poet.<\/p>\n

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Photo: Atsushi Nishijima\/Focus Features\n <\/p>\n

For the fourth time in eight years, the director-actress team of Yorgos Lanthimos and Emma Stone is threatening to win awards with one of the most fascinating movies of the fall season. Twice before this has worked out quite well, with 2018\u2019s The Favourite (ten Oscar nominations, including Lanthimos for Best Director and Stone for Best Supporting Actress) and 2023\u2019s Poor Things (11 Oscar nominations, including Best Director for Lanthimos and Stone\u2019s second Best Actress win). The tepid response to Kinds of Kindness last year proved it\u2019s not a foolproof formula, but Bugonia could be a return to form. Stone plays a CEO who gets kidnapped by a pair of conspiracy theorists who are convinced she\u2019s an alien sent to destroy the planet. The subject matter, cracked as it is, certainly speaks to our conspiracy-drenched times, and the early word on Stone, and especially Jesse Plemons as one of the kidnappers, is positive.<\/p>\n

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Photo: Agata Grzybowska\/Focus Features\n <\/p>\n

If there\u2019s one movie that you could say \u201cwon\u201d the fall festival season, it would be Chlo\u00e9 Zhao\u2019s Hamnet. The Oscar-winning Nomadland director has adapted Maggie O\u2019Farrell\u2019s novel, a fictionalized depiction of William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal) and his wife, Agnes (Jessie Buckley), coping with the death of their son. After premiering at Telluride, word got around quickly that the film \u2014 and, in particular, Buckley\u2019s performance \u2014 was leaving audiences in tears. The same held true in Toronto, where the film won the good-omen People\u2019s Choice Award. If Hamnet earns a Best Picture nomination, it\u2019ll be a comeback story for Zhao after her Marvel misadventure with Eternals. But the bigger story may well be Buckley, who is already being talked about as a front-runner to win Best Actress.<\/p>\n

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Photo: Courtesy Warner Bros.\n <\/p>\n

Some people think the Best Actress award is all but sewn up for Buckley, but Best Actor could be the most competitive category on the ballot. You could make a case for easily seven or eight people. If One Battle After Another does end up as the Best Picture front-runner, you can\u2019t deny that Leonardo DiCaprio would have a strong case for his second Oscar. On the flip side, if Sinners ends up in the driver\u2019s seat, Michael B. Jordan\u2019s dual performances would benefit.<\/p>\n

Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet\u2019s performance as Bob Dylan last year nearly beat Adrien Brody for the trophy, and if he scores again this year as a ping-pong champion in Josh Safdie\u2019s Marty Supreme, that momentum could pick up right where it left off. Of course, Disney and 20th Century Studios are hoping they can follow Chalamet\u2019s playbook with their own rock biopic and push Jeremy Allen White to a win for Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere.<\/p>\n

Compelling narratives abound among the top Best Actor contenders. Dwayne Johnson plays an MMA fighter in Benny Safdie\u2019s The Smashing Machine, following the classic path of a popcorn-movie performer finally taking on a serious role. Daniel Day-Lewis is starring in his first movie since 2017, acting in his son Ronan\u2019s directorial debut, Anemone. George Clooney is playing a movie star reflecting and reckoning with his life and relationships in Noah Baumbach\u2019s Jay Kelly, ticking a crazy number of boxes on the Things Oscar Voters Respond To checklist.<\/p>\n

Jesse Plemons, as mentioned above, is getting great notices for Bugonia. Wagner Moura, meanwhile, has been on the Best Actor radar since Cannes for The Secret Agent. And if Buckley is a shoo-in for Best Actress, the only thing that could stop Paul Mescal getting a Best Actor nomination for Hamnet is if Focus decides to campaign him in Best Supporting Actor.<\/p>\n

At this point, \u201cWho\u2019s going to win Best Actor?\u201d is a question that can wait. \u201cHow are they going to whittle this list down to five names?\u201d is the better question.<\/p>\n

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There was a long stretch of Oscar history when it was assumed that sequels were just not worthy of Academy consideration in major categories. The Godfather Part II was the exception, not the rule. The Lord of the Rings broke with that tradition in the early 2000s, and the past few years have seen numerous examples of sequels and franchise installments getting into the Best Picture race, from Dune, Part Two to Avatar: The Way of Water to Black Panther. This year, two franchise extensions have major Oscar ambitions: Wicked: For Good follows up last year\u2019s most financially successful Best Picture nominee with the second part of the Broadway musical adaptation; and James Cameron is back again with a third Avatar movie, this one called Fire and Ash.<\/p>\n

The previous Avatar installment, 2022\u2019s The Way of Water, snagged a Best Picture nomination but only four nominations overall, down from the nine the first film received. You get the feeling that Fire and Ash may have to deliver something remarkable and surprising to get that third consecutive Best Picture nomination.<\/p>\n

Wicked: For Good may not suffer the same degree of diminishing returns only one year later; the bigger concern could be that For Good turns out to be a disappointing follow-up. Wicked benefited from surpassing a lot of dubious expectations; For Good won\u2019t have that luxury.<\/p>\n

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Photo: Warner Bros.\n <\/p>\n

And now for a silly one \u2026 but one we shouldn\u2019t automatically rule out. Weapons was the horror sensation of the summer, and it featured a buzzy, galvanizing performance from Amy Madigan as Aunt Gladys. The calls for an Oscar campaign came almost immediately<\/a>, and as wry and tongue-in-cheek as some may have been \u2026 is it so crazy? Horror villains have been nominated before, from Piper Laurie in Carrie to Anthony Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs. Recent acclaimed horror performances, from Toni Collette in Hereditary to Florence Pugh in Midsommar, didn\u2019t gain traction, but Supporting Actress could be an easier category to crack. The bottom line is this: The Oscars would be more fun with an Amy Madigan nomination, and she deserves it. Let\u2019s make this happen!<\/p>\n

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