2021 Oscar Predictions: BEST PICTURE (September)

My top 10 is eerily quiet this month, even after Venice and Toronto are over and NYFF is underway. Ammonite drops to make room for Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, which gave us our first look at Viola Davis and Chadwick Boseman this week.

As with Best Director, a handful of films moved to 2021 (outside of the new Oscar eligibility) or still without any updated release information are gone from the chart: West Side Story (20th Century), The French Dispatch (Searchlight Pictures), Next Goal Wins (Searchlight Pictures) and Stillwater (Focus Features) among them. Warner Bros’ Dune is the most vulnerable film to find itself with a pushed off release date if theaters aren’t open on a large scale by December, especially after the wobbly release of Tenet in the US. If that happens, voters will be struggling to find big studio fare to support, potentially giving us one of the most ‘indie’ Best Picture lineups in decades.

Here are my 2021 Oscar predictions in Best Picture for September.

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

• Da 5 Bloods (Netflix)
• The Father (Sony Pictures Classics)
• News of the World (Universal Pictures)
• Dune (Warner Bros) [moved to October 2021]
• Judas and the Black Messiah (Warner Bros)
• Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (Netflix)
• Mank (Netflix)
• Nomadland (Searchlight Pictures)
• One Night in Miami… (Amazon)
• The Trial of the Chicago 7 (Netflix)

Other Contenders: Ammonite (Neon), Hillbilly Elegy (Netflix), Minari (A24), Never Rarely Sometimes Always (Focus Features), On the Rocks (Apple/A24), Soul (Walt Disney/Pixar), Tenet (Warner Bros), The United States vs Billie Holiday (Paramount Pictures)