2024 Oscar Predictions: FILM EDITING (October)

There’s a potential for Oscar history in this category as this year finds more women as top tier contenders than ever before.

Only once in the history of the Academy Awards have three women been nominated for film editing in the same year; Maryann Brandon and Mary Jo Markey for 2015’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Margaret Sixel for Mad Max: Fury Road. Incidentally, this was also the first time two women were nominated for the same film and Sixel is the last woman to win this category. While there are nearly a dozen instances of two women individually nominated for separate films, there has never been three for three films. With Jennifer Lame (Oppenheimer), Thelma Schoonmaker (Killers of the Flower Moon), Michelle Tesoro (Maestro) and Hilda Rasula (American Fiction) all in the running, that could be achieved.

Speaking of Schoonmaker and Oscar history, she could set a new record (or two) herself in this category. She is currently tied with Michael Kahn for both the most nominations (8) and most wins (3) and she is all but assured to at least break the tie of the former. Kahn’s wins all came from his films with Steven Spielberg and likewise Schoonmaker’s wins came from her collaborations with Martin Scorsese.

The American Cinema Editors (ACE) have to reveal the dates of their ACE Eddie nominations and winner ceremony. Oscar nominations will be announced on January 23, 2024 and the 96th Academy Awards will be held on March 10.

Here are my 2024 Oscar predictions in Film Editing for October 2023.

1. Oppenheimer (Universal Pictures) – Jennifer Lame
2. Killers of the Flower Moon (Apple Original Films/Paramount Pictures) – Thelma Schoonmaker
3. Barbie (Warner Bros) – Nick Houy
4. Poor Things (Searchlight Pictures) – Yorgos Mavropsaridis
5. Maestro (Netflix) – Michelle Tesoro
6. The Zone of Interest (A24) – Paul Watts
7. American Fiction (Amazon MGM Studios/Orion) – Hilda Rasula
8. The Holdovers (Focus Features) – Kevin Tent
9. Ferrari (NEON) – Pietro Scalia
10. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (Sony Pictures) – Michael Andrews

Next up: Air (Amazon MGM Studios) – William Goldenberg, Anatomy of a Fall (NEON) – Laurent Sénéchal, The Color Purple (Warner Bros) – Jon Poll, The Iron Claw (A24) – Matthew Hannam, Napoleon (Apple Original Films/Sony Pictures) – Claire Simpson and Sam Restivo

Other contenders: The Bikeriders (20th Century Studios) – Julie Monroe, The Creator (20th Century Studios) – Hank Corwin, Joe Walker and Scott Morris, Creed III (Amazon MGM Studios) – Tyler Nelson and Jessica Baclesse, Dumb Money (Sony Pictures) – Kirk Baxter, John Wick Chapter 4 (Lionsgate) – Nathan Orloff, The Killer (Netflix) – Kirk Baxter, May December (Netflix) – Affonso Gonçalves, NYAD (Netflix) – Christopher Tellefsen, Origin (NEON) – Spencer Averick, Priscilla (A24) – Sarah Flack, Rustin (Netflix) – Andrew Mondshein, Saltburn (Amazon MGM Studios) – Victoria Boydell

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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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