2019 Oscar Predictions: BEST PICTURE (May) – A Star Is Born, The Front Runner enter the top 10

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I know, I know, it’s laaate. I was going to do May predictions ahead of the Cannes Film Festival and then save any changes as a result of the festival until June. But instead, I’m doing May’s predictions now.

So, what, if anything did Cannes tell us? Not a whole but the Grand Prix win for Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman is exactly what his film needed. I had dropped it from the #1 spot for April and it sits at #4 again for May. It will get a major push from Focus Features but with an August release, it won’t have any more festival play than that so it’s going to have to ride that Cannes win and a boatload of marketing to make sure it gets seen. I think it can do it if Focus prioritizes it.

The top 6 is actually same as last month; I have a hard time moving them right now. Post-Cannes is a bit of a doldrum period. There have been a few test screenings of Oscar hopefuls recently but I’m hesitant to give them too much credit, too early. So I’ll just keep those in my pocket for now.

The big changes this month come from the bottom of the top 10. There are three new entries: The Front Runner, which just got a pickup from Sony Pictures Classics; A Star Is Born, because the word of mouth is through the roof; and The Favourite, because it’s Fox Searchlight, which just won yet another Best Picture prize and had a spare just in case. They also have Can You Ever Forgive Me? and I’m keeping that in place until I see if it’s going to get a festival play or not. If it doesn’t it will likely start dropping.

That means that Ad Astra, Destroyer and Black Panther all tumble down into the Next Up section. Something has to come out about Ad Astra to give it some holding power, Destroyer just got picked up by Annapurna, which normally would be a great thing, but the new studio is really stacking itself for the fall and they haven’t been able to manage one Oscar campaign much less four. Black Panther was a reluctant drop but it’s box office success and even its reviews might not be enough to keep it, or bring it back, to the awards conversation come end of the year. People will make comparisons to Get Out but that film had both of those things plus the full weight of industry and critics’ support throughout awards season. We’ll have to see if that happens but I feel like it’s less likely than I did two months ago.

Here are my predictions for Best Picture as of May 21, 2018.

Green – moves up
Red – moves down
Blue – chart debut

2019 Oscar Predictions: BEST DIRECTOR (May)

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Erik Anderson

Erik Anderson is the founder/owner and Editor-in-Chief of AwardsWatch and has always loved all things Oscar, having watched the Academy Awards since he was in single digits; making lists, rankings and predictions throughout the show. This led him down the path to obsessing about awards. Much later, he found himself in film school and the film forums of GoldDerby, and then migrated over to the former Oscarwatch (now AwardsDaily), before breaking off to create AwardsWatch in 2013.

He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Hollywood Critics Association (HCA) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.

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