2023 Oscar Predictions: BEST PICTURE (September)

As mentioned in Best Director, The Fabelmans, which just won the TIFF People’s Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival where it world premiered, frontrunner status is a tightwire act where everyone is waiting for you to teeter just a little bit. It’s only the end of September and we have a long path ahead of us with critics and industry awards not fully kicking off until the second week of December. I’m keeping the Spielberg film in a default pole position but we’re in the nomination predictions stage, not the winner prediction stage. There’s virtually nothing that could impede The Fabelmans getting in a way that not many others on the top contenders list can feel as comfortable with. It’s going to be quite a rollercoaster season, I suspect.

Industry word of mouth on Triangle of Sadness is pretty strong and even if the ‘eat the rich’ theme isn’t exactly original, director Ruben Östlund’s Cannes winner is certainly vivid and wild in its presentation. The Palme d’Or is by no means a major Best Picture Oscar precursor though; in 22 years only four winners have been Best-Picture-nominated at the Academy Awards: 2022’s The Pianist, 2011’s The Tree of Life, 2012’s Amour, and 2019’s Parasite. All were also nominated, or won, Best Director.

I’m still (clearly) on the fence about how this year’s crop of blockbusters will perform with Best Picture. The original box offices smashes Avatar and Black Panther both hit and both won several Oscars and there certainly is audience fervor about their returns (the re-release of Avatar last weekend took in $10.5M) and while Top Gun: Maverick is the biggest surprise moneymaker of the year, the original stayed firmly below the line (winning Original Song, which is in play for it again this year). How far does box office and good will go with the Academy when in years past, unless it’s some kind of cultural or technical revolution, blockbusters are often sidelined?

Here are my 2023 Oscar predictions in Best Picture for September 2022.

Green – moves up ↑ Red – moves down ↓ Blue – new entry ♦

1. The Fabelmans (Universal Pictures)
2. Women Talking (UAR/Orion) ↑
3. Everything Everywhere All at Once (A24) ↑
4. Babylon (Paramount Pictures) ↓
5. The Banshees of Inisherin (Searchlight Pictures) ↑
6. Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths (Netflix) ↓
7. TÁR (Focus Features) ↑
8. Triangle of Sadness (NEON) ↑
9. The Whale (A24)
10. Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (Netflix)

11. Elvis (Warner Bros)
12. Decision to Leave (MUBI)
13. Empire of Light (Searchlight Pictures) ↓
14. All Quiet on the Western Front (Netflix) ↑
15. Top Gun: Maverick (Paramount Pictures) ↑
16. She Said (Universal Pictures)
17. The Son (Sony Pictures Classics) ↓
18. Avatar: The Way of Water (20th Century Studios) ↓
19. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (Walt Disney/Marvel Studios)
20. The Woman King (Sony/Tri-Star) ♦

Other contenders (alphabetical)

Armageddon Time (Focus Features)
Bones and All (MGM/UAR)
Broker (NEON) ↓
Close (A24)
Causeway (Apple Original Films)
The Greatest Beer Run Ever (Apple Original Films)
Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio (Netflix) ♦
I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Columbia/TriStar)
Living (Sony Pictures Classics)
Raymond & Ray (Apple Original Films)
RRR (Raftar Creations) ♦
Spoiler Alert (Focus Features)
The Swimmers (Netflix)
Till (UAR/Orion)
White Noise (Netflix) ↓
The Wonder (Netflix)