2024 Oscar Predictions: PRODUCTION DESIGN (October)

Fantasy, history and period biopics are what you can expect to find in one of the deepest bench categories of the season, Production Design.

While Oppenheimer, Maestro and Killers of the Flower Moon aim for rigid historical accuracy and do so with remarkable period detail, the looks of Asteroid City, Barbie, Wonka and Poor Things are interested in stepping just outside, or far outside, the collective consciousness and into the imagination with dramatic, tactile, set pieces that quite literally take us to another world.

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 Production Design for October 2023.

1. Poor Things (Searchlight Pictures) – Shona Heath, James Price (production designer), Zsuzsa Mihalek (set decorator)
2. Killers of the Flower Moon (Apple Original Films/Paramount Pictures) – Jack Fisk (production designer), Adam Willis (set decorator)
3. Barbie (Warner Bros) – Sarah Greenwood (production designer), Katie Spencer (set decorator)
4. Oppenheimer (Universal Pictures) – Ruth De Jong (production designer), Claire Kaufman (set decorator)
5. Maestro (Netflix) – Kevin Thompson (production designer), Rena DeAngelo (set decorator)
6. The Color Purple (Warner Bros) – Paul D. Austerberry (production designer), Larry Dias (set decorator)
7. Asteroid City (Focus Features) – Adam Stockhausen (production designer)
8. Napoleon (Apple Original Films/Sony Pictures) – Arthur Max (production designer), Celia Bobak (set decorator)
9. Ferrari (NEON) – Maria Djurkovic (production designer), Sophie Phillips (set decorator)
10. Wonka (Warner Bros) – Nathan Crowley (production designer), Lee Sandales (set decorator)

Next up: Beau Is Afraid (A24) – Fiona Crombie (production designer), Laurent Déry-Lauzier (set decorator); The Iron Claw (A24) – James Price (production designer), Tim Cohn (set decorator); Priscilla (A24) – Tamara Deverell (production designer), Patricia Cuccia (set decorator); The Taste of Things (IFC Films) – Toma Baqueni (production designer), TBA (set decorator); The Zone of Interest (A24) – Chris Oddy (production designer), Joanna Kus, Katarzyna Sikora (set decorators)

Other contenders: 

• Air (Amazon MGM Studios) – François Audouy (production designer), Jan Pascale (set decorator)
• Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret. (Lionsgate) – Steve Saklad (production designer), Selina van den Brink (set decorator)
• The Bikeriders (20th Century Studios) – Chad Keith (production designer), Adam Willis (set decorator)
• BlackBerry (IFC Films) – Adam Belanger (production designer), Lucy Larkin (set decorator)
• Chevalier (Searchlight Pictures) – Karen Murphy (production designer), Lotty Sanna (set decorator)
• The Creator (20th Century Studios) – James Clyne (production designer), Claire Levinson-Gendler (set decorator)
• Dream Scenario (A24) – Zosia Mackenzie (production designer), Brittany Morrison (set decorator)
• Freud’s Last Session (Sony Pictures Classics) – Luciana Arrighi (production designer), John Neligan (set decorator)
• A Haunting in Venice (20th Century Studios) – John Paul Kelly (production designer), Celia Bobak (set decorator)
• The Holdovers (Focus Features) – Ryan Warren Smith (production designer), Markus Wittman (set decorator)
• The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (Lionsgate) – Uli Hanisch (production designer), TBA (set decorator)
• Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (Walt Disney Pictures) – Adam Stockhausen (production designer), Anna Pinnock (set decorator)
• Origin (NEON) – Ina Mayhew (production designer), Jacqueline Jacobson Scarfo (set decorator)
• Rustin (Netflix) – Mark Ricker (production designer), Amy Wells (set decorator)
• The Killer (Netflix) – Donald Graham Burt (production designer), Brandi Kalish (set decorator)
• Saltburn (Amazon MGM Studios) – Suzie Davies (production designer), Charlotte Dirickx (set decorator)

Photo by Atsushi Nishijima / courtesy of Searchlight Pictures

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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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