2024 Oscar Predictions: BEST PICTURE and BEST DIRECTOR (October)

As the major fall festivals have just about ended – AFI FEST kicks off this week – festival awards from the regionals, combined with Cannes, Venice and Toronto will start shaping narratives as they often do every year.

While Anatomy of a Fall won Cannes and Poor Things won Venice, both juried awards, American Fiction followed up its People’s Choice Award from Toronto with another audience prize, from the Mill Valley Film Festival where it tied with Rustin. Rustin then earned an audience prize from the Heartland Film Festival. Radical, which opened in limited release in the U.S. from Pantelion Films and Participant last weekend, won the Festival Favorite award at Sundance at the beginning of the year and Overall Favorite at Mill Valley. With these regionals starting to trickle in you can start to see if there might be a consensus forming before industry and critics start chiming in.

Speaking of critics, the Gotham Awards nominations are announcing tomorrow with a huge, sweeping change that makes them all but impossible to predict. While still utilizing a nominating committee of around just five people (usually NY-based critics), they’ll no longer be limited to rewarding independent film as they have lifted the $35M budget cap. That means anything American and English-language can compete in all film categories. Ben Affleck (Air) and Bradley Cooper (Maestro) have already reaped the rewards of the new guidelines as both are set for individual honors. The org also opened up international features to Outstanding Lead Performance, Outstanding Supporting Performance, Best Screenplay, and the Bingham Ray Breakthrough Director Award. Best Feature will remain for U.S. features only and Best International Feature will be open to all non-U.S. features. International films are also once again eligible for Best Documentary Feature.

The Color Purple, The Iron Claw and Napoleon remain the top contenders that will not have a festival run and have as of yet not begun to screen for anyone.

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 October 2023.

BEST PICTURE

1. Oppenheimer (Universal Pictures) (-)
2. Killers of the Flower Moon (Apple Original Films/Paramount Pictures) (-)
3. Poor Things (Searchlight Pictures) (-)
4. Barbie (Warner Bros) (▲)
5. Maestro (Netflix) (▲)
6. American Fiction (Amazon MGM/Orion) (▲)
7. The Holdovers (Focus Features) (▲)
8. The Zone of Interest (A24) (▼)
9. Anatomy of a Fall (NEON) (▲)
10. The Color Purple (Warner Bros) (▼)

Next up: Air (Amazon Studios), All of Us Strangers (Searchlight Pictures), The Iron Claw (A24), May December (Netflix), Napoleon (Apple Original Films/Sony Pictures), NYAD (Netflix), Past Lives (A24), Priscilla (A24), Rustin (Netflix), Saltburn (Amazon Studios)

Other contenders:

• Asteroid City (Focus Features)
• The Bikeriders (20th Century Studios)*
• Bob Marley: One Love (Paramount Pictures)
• The Boy and the Heron (GKIDS)
• The Boys in the Boat (Amazon MGM)
• Ferrari (NEON)
• Freud’s Last Session (Sony Pictures Classics)
• The Killer (Netflix)
• Society of the Snow (Netflix)
• Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (Sony Pictures)
• The Taste of Things (IFC Films)

*currently removed from 2023 schedule

BEST DIRECTOR

1. Christopher Nolan – Oppenheimer (Universal Pictures) (-)
2. Martin Scorsese – Killers of the Flower Moon (Apple Original Films/Paramount Pictures) (-)
3. Yorgos Lanthimos – Poor Things (Searchlight Pictures) (▲)
4. Jonathan Glazer – The Zone of Interest (A24) (▼)
5. Greta Gerwig – Barbie (Warner Bros)
6. Alexander Payne – The Holdovers (Focus Features)
7. Bradley Cooper – Maestro (Netflix)
8. Justine Triet – Anatomy of a Fall (NEON)
9. Celine Song – Past Lives (A24) (▲)
10. Cord Jefferson – American Fiction (Amazon MGM/Orion) (-)

Next up: Ben Affleck – Air (Amazon Studios), Blitz Bazawule – The Color Purple (Warner Bros) (▼), Sean Durkin – The Iron Claw (A24), Todd Haynes – May December (Netflix), Ridley Scott – Napoleon (Apple Original Films/Sony Pictures), Sofia Coppola – Priscilla (A24), Emerald Fennell – Saltburn (Amazon Studios)

Other contenders:

• Andrew Haigh – All of Us Strangers (Searchlight Pictures)
• Wes Anderson – Asteroid City (Focus Features)
• Jeff Nichols – The Bikeriders (20th Century Studios)*
• Reinaldo Marcus Green – Bob Marley: One Love (Paramount Pictures)
• Hayao Miyazaki – The Boy and the Heron (GKIDS)
• George Clooney – The Boys in the Boat (Amazon MGM)
• Michael Mann – Ferrari (NEON)
• Matt Brown – Freud’s Last Session (Sony Pictures Classics)
• 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)

*currently removed from 2023 schedule

Photo: Atsushi Nishijima / courtesy of Searchlight Pictures