2021 Oscar Predictions: SOUND (October)

With Dune gone, Sound of Metal moves up (a Hamptons Film Q&A revealed the sound designers worked for two years with 23 weeks of sound recordings for the film) and News of the World enters the top 5.

Still, multiple musicals and musical biopics are on the awards landscape: any one or more of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, The Prom, Respect and The United States vs Billie Holiday could factor into the sound race.

Here are my 2021 Oscar predictions in Sound for October.

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

1. Soul (Pixar)
Nominees TBD

2. Tenet (Warner Bros)
Nominees TBD

3. Sound of Metal (Amazon Studios)
Nominees TBD

4. News of the World (Universal Pictures)
Nominees TBD

5. Mank (Netflix)
Nominees TBD

Other Contenders

Bad Boys for Life (Columbia Pictures)
Nominees TBD

Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (Warner Bros)
Nominees TBD

Da 5 Bloods (Netflix)
Nominees TBD

Greyhound (Apple TV+)
Nominees TBD

The Invisible Man (Universal Pictures)
Nominees TBD

Judas and the Black Messiah (Warner Bros)
Nominees TBD

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (Netflix)
Nominees TBD

The Midnight Sky (Netflix)
Nominees TBD

Mulan (Walt Disney Pictures)
Nominees TBD

The Prom (Netflix)
Nominees TBD

Respect (MGM/UA)
Nominees TBD

The Trial of the Chicago 7 (Netflix)
Nominees TBD

The United States vs. Billie Holiday (Paramount Pictures)
Nominees TBD

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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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