2025 Oscar Predictions: BEST PICTURE and BEST DIRECTOR (July)

With full lineups of the Venice and Toronto film festivals announced, we’re finally in a place to make some educated Oscar predictions and rely a bit less on shooting in the dark. Instinct is still key, as much as early buzz, word of mouth and real source intel, but seeing the groundwork laid by studios in their festival path choices for their films remains one of the most reliable factors, even in an era where had a super early festival run winner in Everything Everywhere All At Once (playing SXSW before its spring release) and just last year with Oppenheimer‘s summer release and zero festival presence. Exceptions, not the rule, until that line is so blurry it disappears. We won’t see that this year.

Last year, Cannes brought us two of the season’s biggest Oscar contenders with Anatomy of a Fall and The Zone of Interest, as mentioned in last month’s piece. This year’s Palme d’Or winner Anora, from Sean Baker, looks to set more festivals aflame before its October release from NEON. Emilia Pérez, which Netflix picked up after its double win – the Jury Prize and quadruple Best Actress win – is also going to be heavily featured this fall before its release. Payal Kapadia’s Grand Prize winner All We Imagine as Light, from Drive My Car distributors Janus/Sideshow, has some dark horse energy. Despite containing the Best Actor winner in Jesse Plemons, Kind of Kindness from Yorgos Lanthimos and Searchlight Pictures feels like a non-starter after its quiet June theatrical release.

Speaking of Searchlight, they now has three other films on deck for fall festival and awards season (Sundance winner A Real Pain in October, Nightbitch with TIFF Acting Tribute winner Amy Adams), including the just announced 2024 release of James Mangold’s A Complete Unknown, the Bob Dylan biopic starring Timothée Chalamet. The multiple Oscar-winning studio dropped a full length trailer for this film earlier this week, giving us some of the fun, early chaos we love.

Venice has the world premieres of Pedro Almodóvar’s The Room Next Door with Oscar winners Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore, Pablo Larraín’s Maria with Oscar winner Angelina Jolie, Halina Reijn’s Babygirl with Oscar winner Nicole Kidman and Joker: Folie à Deux with Oscar winners Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga. Not to mention the highly anticipated second film of 2024 from Luca Guadagnino, Queer with Daniel Craig, and I’m Still Here from Walter Salles, featuring Fernanda Torres, the daughter os Fernanda Montenegro, who earned a Best Actress Oscar nominations for Salles’ 1998 film Central Station. How would that be as a circular narrative?

Toronto’s world premieres include the aforementioned Marielle Heller’s Nightbitch with 6-time Oscar nominee Amy Adams, John Crowley’s We Live in Time with Oscar nominees Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield, Oscar winner Ron Howard and his new film Eden, with a starry cast that includes Oscar nominees Jude Law, Ana de Armas and Vanessa Kirby, with Sydney Sweeney and Daniel Brühl. TIFF we also have the first looks at Unstoppable with Jennifer Lopez and Jharrel Jerome, The Fire Inside with Ryan Destiny and Oscar nominee Brian Tyree Henry and The Last Showgirl with Pamela Anderson and Oscar winner Jamie Lee Curtis as well a surprise in the premiere of Hard Truths, the new Mike Leigh, a 7-time Oscar nominee and starring Oscar nominee Marianne Jean-Baptiste.

Several of these films will find themselves at Telluride and/or New York, the latter of which will have Nickel Boys, the new film from Oscar nominee RaMell Ross with Oscar nominee Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor and Blitz, from Oscar winner Steve McQueen and starring four-time Oscar nominee Saoirse Ronan.

While we never officially now the full Telluride lineup until the day before the festival, designations at TIFF and NYFF plus timing at Venice (which has complete crossover with the Colorado mountain fest that runs August 30-September 2) give us a lot to work with. For example, we know that Maria and Babygirl are showing early enough at Venice for a Telluride showing to be possible, if not likely. But, on the other side, The Room Next Door and Queer won’t show up at Venice until Telluride is on its last day or over, respectively. We know by designations that Conclave, the new film from All Quiet on the Western Front director Edward Berger, is an ‘International Premiere’ and should find its bow at Telluride. Same goes for Nickel Boys, The Piano Lesson with John David Washington, Danielle Deadwyler and Oscar nominee Samuel L. Jackson, Better Man from Michael Gracey (The Greatest Showman) and The End, from Joshua Oppenheimer and starring Oscar winner Tilda Swinton and Oscar nominee Michael Shannon.

That brings us to the non-festival contenders. Dune Part II already came out in spring, so did Challengers. Wicked Part I and Gladiator II, both coming out on November 22, fall into the traditional release-only films strategy. A Complete Unknown is a bit of a mystery. Will Mangold complete post-production on the December release fast enough for a festival play and, if so, which one? Telluride seems way too soon so that only really leaves AFI at the end of October. Unless it sneaks in as the NYFF Centerpiece film, which is possible. My only hesitation there is that the last four films in a row there have been female-directed and that’s just a trend too interesting to not consider.

Academy Awards nominations will be announced January 17, 2025 and the 97th Oscars will be held on March 2.

Here are my 2025 Oscar predictions in Best Picture and Best Director for July.

BEST PICTURE

• 1. Conclave (Focus Features) – 11/8
• 2. Anora (NEON) – 10/18
• 3. Emilia Pérez (Netflix) – date TBA
• 4. Blitz (Apple Original Films) – 11/22
• 5. Dune Part II (Warner Bros) – 3/1
• 6. Nickel Boys (Amazon MGM) – 10/25
• 7. A Complete Unknown (Searchlight Pictures) – December
• 8. Gladiator II (Paramount Pictures) – 11/22
• 9. Sing Sing (A24) – 7/12
• 10. Queer (TBA) – date TBA

Next up: Challengers (Amazon MGM) – 4/26, The End (NEON) – date TBA, Hard Truths (Bleecker Street) – 10/18, Hedda (Amazon MGM) – date TBA, Joker: Folie à Deux (Warner Bros) – 10/4, Juror #2 (Warner Bros) – date TBA, Kinds of Kindness (Searchlight Pictures) – 6/28, Maria (TBA) – date TBA, Nightbitch (Searchlight Pictures) – 12/6, The Piano Lesson (Netflix) – date TBA, A Real Pain (Searchlight Pictures) – 10/18, The Room Next Door (Sony Pictures Classics) – date TBA, We Live in Time (A24) – 10/11, Wicked Part I (Universal Pictures) – 11/22

Other contenders: The Actor (NEON) – date TBA, All We Imagine As Light (Janus/Sideshow) – date TBA, Bird (MUBI), Civil War (A24) – 4/12, Dìdi (Focus Features) – 7/26, A Different Man (A24) – 9/20, Evil Does Not Exist (Sideshow) – 5/3, The Fire Inside (Amazon MGM) – 12/25, Here (Sony Pictures/TriStar) – 11/15, His Three Daughters (Netflix) – 9/6, Hit Man (Netflix) – 6/7, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (Warner Bros) – 5/24, Megalopolis (Lionsgate) – 9/27, Nosferatu (Focus Features) – 12/25, The Seed of the Sacred Fig (NEON) – date TBA, Small Things Like This (Lionsgate) – date TBA, The Substance (MUBI) – 9/20, Unstoppable (Amazon MGM) – date TBA

2024 or 2025?: The Apprentice (Briarcliff Entertainment), Hedda (Amazon MGM), High and Low (Apple Original Films), Juror #2 (Warner Bros), SNL 1975 (Sony Pictures)

BEST DIRECTOR

• 1. Edward Berger – Conclave (Focus Features)
• 2. Sean Baker – Anora (NEON)
• 3. Jacques Audiard – Emilia Pérez (Netflix)
• 4. Steve McQueen – Blitz (Apple Original Films)
• 5. Denis Villeneuve – Dune Part II (Warner Bros)
• 6. James Mangold – A Complete Unknown (Searchlight Pictures)
• 7. RaMell Ross – Nickel Boys (Amazon MGM)
• 8. Ridley Scott – Gladiator II (Paramount Pictures)
• 9. Luca Guadagnino – Queer (TBA)
• 10. Payal Kapadia – All We Imagine as Light (Janus/Sideshow)

Next up: Luca Guadagnino – Challengers (Amazon MGM), Walter Salles – I’m Still Here (Sony Pictures Classics), Todd Phillips – Joker: Folie à Deux (Warner Bros), Yorgos Lanthimos – Kind of Kindness (Searchlight Pictures), Pablo Larraín – Maria (TBA), Marielle Heller – Nightbitch (Searchlight Pictures), Malcolm Washington – The Piano Lesson (Netflix), Pedro Almodóvar – The Room Next Door (Sony Pictures Classics), Mohammad Rasoulof – The Seed and the Fig (NEON), Greg Kwedar – Sing Sing (A24), Joshua Oppenheimer – The End (NEON), John Crowley – We Live in Time (A24)

Other contenders: Andrea Arnold – Bird (MUBI), Sean Wang – Dìdi (Focus Features), Ryusuke Hamaguchi – Evil Does Not Exist (Janus/Sideshow), Rachel Morrison – The Fire Inside (Amazon MGM), George Miller – Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (Warner Bros), Richard Linklater – Hit Man (Netflix), Mike Leigh – Hard Truths (Bleecker Street), Robert Zemekis – Here (Sony Pictures/Tri-Star), Azazel Jacobs – His Three Daughters (Netflix), Francis Ford Coppola – Megalopolis (Lionsgate), Jesse Eisenberg – A Real Pain (Searchlight Pictures), John M. Chu – Wicked Part I (Warner Bros)

2024 or 2025?: Ali Abbasi – The Apprentice (Briarcliff Entertainment), Nia DaCosta – Hedda (Amazon MGM), Spike Lee – High and Low (Apple Original Films), Clint Eastwood – Juror#2 (Warner Bros), Jason Reitman – SNL 1975 (Sony Pictures)