The Gotham and BIFA nominations have given us their usual inside look at what the Spirit Awards and BAFTA might look like, a peripheral version of them. Gotham and its very small voting pool of people went deep for Andrew Haigh’s All of Us Strangers, Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest and Celine Song’s Past Lives. They loved A.V. Rockwell’s A Thousand and One as well, which could be a big Spirit Award contender but still feels a bit outside the realm of Oscar attention. BIFA, the British Independent Film Awards, gave Strangers a whopping 14 nominations and three craft wins already.
The Gothams, the first group to announce winners, will reveal their winners on November 27, kicking off the season. New York Film Critics Circle (NYFCC) announce on the 30th and Spirit Award nominations come December 5. Check the calendar for more.
The Bikeriders is officially the second Austin Butler casualty of the 2023 calendar as not only did 20th Century Studios pull it from its early December bow before the SAG-AFTRA strike was over and the star presence for promotion was still up in the air, but producer New Regency is reportedly shopping the film elsewhere entirely. Earlier this year, Warner Bros pulled Dune Part 2, in which the Oscar-nominated Butler has a starring role, and moved it to Spring 2024.
Nominations for the Golden Globes will be announced on December 11, 2023 and the awards ceremony will be held on Sunday, January 7, 2024. The Directors Guild of America (DGA) will announce their nominations on January 10, 2024 and hold their awards ceremony on February 10. Oscar nominations will be announced on January 23 and the 96th Academy Awards will be held on March 10.
Here are my 2024 Oscar Predictions in Best Picture and Best Director for November 2023.
BEST PICTURE
Oppenheimer (Universal Pictures)
Poor Things (Searchlight Pictures)
Barbie (Warner Bros)
Maestro (Netflix)
Killers of the Flower Moon (Apple Original Films)
American Fiction (Amazon MGM/Orion)
The Holdovers (Focus Features)
The Zone of Interest (A24)
Past Lives (A24)
The Color Purple (Warner Bros)
Anatomy of a Fall (NEON)
All of Us Strangers (Searchlight Pictures)
May December (Netflix)
The Iron Claw (A24)
Rustin (Netflix)
Air (Amazon Studios)
NYAD (Netflix)
Saltburn (Amazon Studios)
Napoleon (Apple Original Films/Sony Pictures)
The Boy and the Heron (GKIDS)
Other contenders:
Asteroid City (Focus Features)
Bob Marley: One Love (Paramount Pictures)
The Boys in the Boat (Amazon MGM)
Ferrari (NEON)
The Killer (Netflix)
Origin (NEON)
Priscilla (A24)
Society of the Snow (Netflix)
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (Sony Pictures)
The Taste of Things (IFC Films)
A Thousand and One (Focus Features)
BEST DIRECTOR
Christopher Nolan – Oppenheimer (Universal Pictures)
Martin Scorsese – Killers of the Flower Moon (Apple Original Films)
Yorgos Lanthimos – Poor Things (Searchlight Pictures)
Greta Gerwig – Barbie (Warner Bros)
Jonathan Glazer – The Zone of Interest (A24)
Bradley Cooper – Maestro (Netflix)
Alexander Payne – The Holdovers (Focus Features)
Cord Jefferson – American Fiction (Amazon MGM/Orion)
Celine Song – Past Lives (A24)
Justine Triet – Anatomy of a Fall (NEON)
Blitz Bazawule – The Color Purple (Warner Bros)
Todd Haynes – May December (Netflix)
Andrew Haigh – All of Us Strangers (Searchlight Pictures)
Ben Affleck – Air (Amazon Studios)
Ridley Scott – Napoleon (Apple Original Films/Sony Pictures)
Hayao Miyazaki – The Boy and the Heron (GKIDS)
Emerald Fennell – Saltburn (Amazon Studios)
Sofia Coppola – Priscilla (A24)
Sean Durkin – The Iron Claw (A24)
Michael Mann – Ferrari (NEON)
Other contenders:
Wes Anderson – Asteroid City (Focus Features)
Reinaldo Marcus Green – Bob Marley: One Love (Paramount Pictures)
George Clooney – The Boys in the Boat (Amazon MGM)
David Fincher – The Killer (Netflix)
Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi – NYAD (Netflix)
George C. Wolfe – Rustin (Netflix)
J.A. Bayona – Society of the Snow (Netflix)
Joaquim Dos Santos/Kemp Powers/Justin K. Thompson – Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (Sony Pictures)
Trần Anh Hùng – The Taste of Things (IFC Films)
A.V. Rockwell – A Thousand and One (Focus Features)
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), Hollywood Critics Association (HCA) 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.