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.
Poor Things (Searchlight Pictures) – Shona Heath, James Price (production designer), Zsuzsa Mihalek (set decorator)
Killers of the Flower Moon (Apple Original Films/Paramount Pictures) – Jack Fisk (production designer), Adam Willis (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)
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.