2021 Oscar Predictions: PRODUCTION DESIGN (September)

There usually isn’t much room for subtlety or nuance in the Oscar for Production Design so don’t expect Frances McDormand’s fall leaves plates from Nomadland to show up here. What we’ll see are huge, expensive productions with designs both tactile and computer generated to fill in the gaps. Warner Bros’ Dune and Netflix’s Mank should be able to find a place here, as they will with the majority of technical categories. I think, at least at this stage, Ammonite could find some below the line love as well.

Films with (mostly) single locations like Amazon’s One Night in Miami… and Death on the Nile could be outside shots and we still have plenty of completely unseen films like Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and Hillbilly Elegy (both from Netflix) to make much of an educated guess.

Here are my ranked 2021 Oscar predictions in Production Design for September. [UPDATED to reflect the just announced move of West Side Story to December 2021]

1. Mank (Netflix)
Donald Graham Burt (production designer), Jan Pascale (set decorator)


2. Dune (20th Century Studios) [moved to October 2021]
Patrice Vermette (production designer), Richard Roberts and Zsuzsanna Sipos (set
decorators)

3. Mulan (Walt Disney Pictures)
Grant Major (production designer), Anne Kuljian (set decorator)

4. Ammonite (Neon)
Sarah Finlay (production designer), Sophie Hervieu (set decorator)

5. The Personal History of David Copperfield (Searchlight Pictures)
Cristina Casali (production designer), Charlotte Dirickx (set decorator)


Other Contenders (alphabetical)

Da 5 Bloods (Netflix)
Wynn Thomas (production designer), Jeanette Scott (set decorator)


Death on the Nile (20th Century Studios)
Jim Clay (production designer), Abi Groves (set designer)


Emma. (Focus Features)
Kave Quinn (production designer), Stella Fox (set decorations)


Hillbilly Elegy (Netflix)
Molly Hughes (production designer), Merissa Lombardo (set decorator)


Judas and the Black Messiah (Warner Bros)
Sam Lisenco (production designer), Rebecca Brown (set decorator)


Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (Netflix)
Mark Ricker (production designer), Karen O’Hara and Diana Stoughton (set decorators)


News of the World (Universal Pictures)
David Crank (production designer), Elizabeth Keenan (set decorator)


One Night in Miami… (Amazon Studios)
Page Buckner (production designer), Janessa Hitsman (set decorator)


Respect (MGM/UA)
Ina Mayhew (production designer), Sarah Carter (decorator)


The Trial of the Chicago 7 (Netflix)
Shane Valentino (production designer), Andrew Baseman (set decorator)


The United States vs. Billie Holiday (Paramount Pictures)
Daniel T. Dorrance (production designer), Pascale Deschênes (set decorator)

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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), 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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