2021 Oscar Predictions: ORIGINAL SCORE (December)
With critics wins from Boston Online, Chicago, Florida and Los Angeles it’s an easy call to keep Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross’s score for Soul at the #1 spot. While they’re still likely to secure a second nomination with Mank (a much more out of the box score for the duo), Soul is far out in front.
News of the World and Tenet rise this month and the latest effort from 15-time Oscar nominee Thomas Newman, Let Them All Talk, enters the top 10.
Here are my ranked 2021 Oscar predictions in Original Score for December.
Green – moves up; Red – moves down; Blue – new entry this month
1. Soul (Pixar)
Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (and John Batiste, if eligible)
2. Mank (Netflix)
Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross
3. News of the World (Universal Pictures)
James Newton Howard
4. Da 5 Bloods (Netflix)
Terence Blanchard
5. Minari (A24)
Emile Mosseri
6. The Trial of the Chicago 7 (Netflix)
Daniel Pemberton
7. The Midnight Sky (Netflix)
Alexandre Desplat
8. Tenet (Warner Bros)
Ludwig Göransson
9. Let Them All Talk (HBO Max)
Thomas Newman
10. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (Netflix)
Branford Marsalis
Other Contenders
Ammonite (Neon)
Volker Bertelmann and Dustin O’Halloran
Hillbilly Elegy (Netflix)
David Fleming and Hans Zimmer
The Life Ahead (Netflix)
Gabriel Yared
Mulan (Disney+)
Henry Gregson-Williams
One Night in Miami… (Amazon Studios)
Terence Blanchard
Over the Moon (Netflix)
Steven Price
Sound of Metal (Amazon Studios)
Abraham Marder and Nicolas Becker
The United States vs. Billie Holiday (Paramount Pictures)
Kris Bowers
Tenet image courtesy of Warner Bros
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), Critics Choice Association (CCA), San Francisco Bay Area Film Critics Circle (SFBAFCC) 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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