2021 Oscar Predictions: BEST PICTURE (December)

A24’s First Cow and Searchlight’s Nomadland are the two films that jumped out ahead in the first critics’ announcements this month with the caveat that Los Angeles went off and selected Steve McQueen’s Small Axe anthology (yes, all five films) as 2020’s Best Picture.

While Nomadland‘s wins you could see in the cards, the New York win for First Cow is pretty significant. In the 80+ years of the New York Film Critics Circle, every single Best. Film winner there went on to earn at least one Oscar nomination and the overwhelming majority end up as Best Picture nominees or winners. In the last 20 years, only four films missed a BP nomination (2001’s Mulholland Dr, 2002’s Far From Heaven, 2006’s United 93 and 2015’s Carol). Two of them (MD and U93) earned Best Director nominations while FFH and Carol turned out Best Actress contenders. Considering that the last decade just has the one outlier, prevailing logic would say that statistics, trends and history would point to First Cow being a likely Best Picture contender. But A24 is going to have its hands full trying to keep Minari afloat after a very modest showing with critics’ this month.

Speaking of Minari, the announcement by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association that the film would be competing in their Foreign Language Film category at the Golden Globes (and therefore not allowed in the group’s Best Picture spots) caused a huge uproar from film fans and film makers alike on Twitter. This wasn’t a surprise announcement; it’s a long-standing rule with the group that a film that contains more 50% non-English language(s) must submit there. Last year saw Parasite win there, as well as Best Director. But it was the inclusion of The Farewell (also from A24, like Minari) that started the wave. Like Minari, The Farewell was a US production and USA is officially listed as the country of origin from the HFPA themselves. The Farewell director herself, Lulu Wang, commented via her Twitter:

“I have not seen a more American film than Minari this year. It’s a story about an immigrant family, IN America, pursuing the American dream. We really need to change these antiquated rules that characterizes American as only English-speaking.”

Lulu Wang, director of The Farewell via her Twitter

The conversation caught fire with people reminding the HFPA themselves that they’ve given spots in their Best Picture category to Inglourious Basterds and Babel, both films that contain less than 50% English (where Babel actually won). So far, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association has yet to respond to the backlash (which included calls for a boycott) but with submission dates already passed it’s unlikely, if not impossible, that the group will make any changes this year. But I do wonder if this backlash can help the film’s Oscar chances.

We finally have a date for Shaka King’s Judas and the Black Messiah (February 12, 2021 from Warner Bros) and it moves up a notch. It was announced yesterday that Paramount Pictures lost yet another property as Lee Daniels’ The United States vs Billie Holiday is getting scooped up by Hulu. Paramount had already started a campaign and marketing in earnest (including a trailer ready to drop) but we’ll have to see how Hulu handles the transition and how quickly they can turn it into a contender.

Here are my ranked 2021 Oscar predictions in Best Picture for December.

Green – moves up; Red – moves down; Blue – new entry this month

1. Nomadland (Searchlight Pictures)
Frances McDormand, Peter Spears, Mollye Asher, Dan Janvey, Chloé Zhao (producers)

2. The Trial of the Chicago 7 (Netflix)
Stuart M. Besser, Matt Jackson, Marc Platt, Tyler Thompson (producers)

3. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (Netflix)
Todd Black, Denzel Washington, Dany Wolf (producers)

4. Mank (Netflix)
David Fincher, Ceán Chaffin, Eric Roth, Douglas Urbanski (producers)

5. Da 5 Bloods (Netflix)
Jon Kilik, Spike Lee, Beatriz Levin, Lloyd Levin (producers)

6. News of the World (Universal Pictures)
Gary Goetzman, Gregory Goodman, Gail Mutrux (producers)

7. The Father (Sony Pictures Classics)
Philippe Carcassonne, Simon Friend, Jean-Louis Livi, David Parfitt, Christophe Spadone (producers)

8. Minari (A24)
Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner, Christina Oh (producers)

9. Judas and the Black Messiah (Warner Bros)
Charles D. King, Ryan Coogler, Shaka King (producers)

10. One Night in Miami… (Amazon Studios)
Jess Wu Calder, Keith Calder, Jody Klein (producers)

Other Contenders (alphabetical)

Ammonite (Neon)
Iain Canning, Emile Sherman, Fodhla Cronin O’Reilly (producers)

Another Round (Samuel Goldwyn Mayer)
Kasper Dissing, Sisse Graum Jørgensen (producers)

First Cow (A24)
Iain Canning, Emile Sherman, Fodhla Cronin O’Reilly (producers)

Hillbilly Elegy (Netflix)
Neil Kopp, Vincent Savino, Anish Savjani (producers)

Never Rarely Sometimes Always (Focus Features)
Adele Romanski, Sara Murphy (producers)

On the Rocks (A24/Apple+)
Sofia Coppola, Youree Henley (producers)

Pieces of a Woman (Netflix)
Ashley Levinson, Aaron Ryder, Kevin Turen (producers)

The Prom (Netflix)
Adam Anders, Dori Berinstein, Chad Beguelin, Bill Damaschke, Bob Martin, Ryan Murphy, Scott Robertson, Matthew Sklar, Alexis Martin Woodall (producers)

Promising Young Woman (Focus Features)
Ben Browning, Emerald Fennell, Margot Robbie, Tom Ackerley, Josey McNamara, Ashley Fox (producers)

Sound of Metal (Amazon Studios)
Bert Hamelinck, Sacha Ben Harroche, Bill Benz, Cathy Benz (producers)

Soul (Pixar)
Dana Murray (producer)

Tenet (Warner Bros)
Christopher Nolan, Emma Thomas (producers)

The United States vs. Billie Holiday (Hulu)
Lee Daniels, Jordan Fudge, Tucker Tooley, Joe Roth, Jeff Kirschenbaum, Pamela Oas Williams (producers)

Minari image courtesy of A24