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

The fall festival season is over, the Gotham Awards nominations are in. Oscar season has begun.

Always considered the kickoff of awards season, the Gotham Awards nominations were revealed this week and without too much surprise Sean Baker’s Anora led with four nods: Best Feature, Best Director, Outstanding Lead Performance (Mikey Madison) and Outstanding Supporting Performance (Yura Borisnov). Next up with three apiece were RaMell Ross’s Nickel Boys (Best Feature, Best Director, Breakthrough Performer – Brandon Wilson) and Jane Schoenbrun’s I Saw the TV Glow (Best Director, Outstanding Lead Performance – Justice Smith, Outstanding Supporting Performance – Brigette Lundy-Paine).

While the nominations (see full list here) had its handful of surprises (Challengers in Best Feature as its only nod, The Brutalist missing there) and snubs (notably, Joan Chen, Maria and Emilia Pérez getting completely blanked) it’s really, and I mean really, crucial to look at these with proper context. It can be too easy to start upending your predictions based on the whims of just five people voting in these categories. For every Anatomy of a Fall screenplay win that becomes an Oscar bellwether, there’s an Charles Melton who begins and ends a run with the Gothams. They are a great jumping off point but even as the org itself has lifted the budget cap so that any film can get in, the major studios were shut out completely. What it does is highlight the indies that were on the Oscar path already – like Anora and Nickel Boys – but we still have blockbusters like Dune: Part Two, Gladiator II and Wicked (Part One?) to consider.

Largely positive reactions for Gladiator II kicked off October 18 at its first public screening (on the Paramount Lot, where yours truly was in attendance) as well as multiple follow up screenings in Los Angeles and New York as it kicks off its nearly monthlong worldwide premiere tour, and reactions to Wicked dropped today after last night’s screening on the Universal lot, again to largely positive response (mostly for Ariana Grande) in the face of complaints over its washed out look in clips ahead of yesterday’s showing. It’s also doing a glitzy multi-city tour in the U.S. before its release. Both films are expected to post healthy box office numbers when they open on the same day next month (November 22) with the PG-rated Wicked expected to easily outpace the bloody R-rated Gladiator II. Either way, these massively budgeted tent poles have to be hits to get in.

I’m still riding with Conclave as the top contender, having pocketed bi-coastal audience award wins at festivals in Mill Valley then Middleburg, prime older Oscar voter representation that I don’t underestimate. The film opened last weekend to $6.6M from about 1700 screens. A good start, but one that will probably need positive word of mouth to keep it moving through November before the behemoths hit.

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

BEST PICTURE

Next up: A Different Man (A24) – Gotham, Hard Truths (Bleecker Street), His Three Daughters (Netflix), Saturday Night (Sony Pictures), Wicked Part I (Universal Pictures)

Other contenders: The Apprentice (Briarcliff Entertainment), Better Man (Paramount Pictures), Civil War (A24), Dìdi (Focus Features), The Fire Inside (Amazon MGM), Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (Warner Bros), Here (Sony Pictures/Tri-Star Pictures), Hit Man (Netflix), Joker: Folie à Deux (Warner Bros), Juror #2 (Warner Bros), Kinds of Kindness (Searchlight Pictures), Maria (Netflix), Megalopolis (Lionsgate), Nightbitch (Searchlight Pictures), Nosferatu (Focus Features), The End (NEON), Unstoppable (Amazon MGM), We Live in Time (A24), The Wild Robot (Universal Pictures, Dreamworks Animation)

BEST DIRECTOR

Next up: Payal Kapadia – All We Imagine as Light (Janus/Sideshow) – Gotham, Halina Reijn – Babygirl (A24), Luca Guadagnino – Challengers (Amazon MGM), Aaron Shimberg – A Different Man (A24), Mike Leigh – Hard Truths (Bleecker Street), Jane Shoenbrun – I Saw the TV Glow (A24) – Gotham, Malcolm Washington – The Piano Lesson (Netflix), Luca Guadagnino – Queer (A24), Jesse Eisenberg – A Real Pain (Searchlight Pictures), Pedro Almodóvar – The Room Next Door (Sony Pictures Classics), Jason Reitman – Saturday Night (Sony Pictures), Tim Fehlbaum – September 5 (Paramount Pictures), Greg Kwedar – Sing Sing (A24), Coralie Fargeat – The Substance (MUBI)

Other contenders: Michael Gracey – Better Man (Paramount Pictures), Sean Wang – Dìdi (Focus Features), Rachel Morrison – The Fire Inside (Amazon MGM), George Miller – Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (Warner Bros), Richard Linklater – Hit Man (Netflix), Robert Zemekis – Here (Sony Pictures/Columbia Pictures), Azazel Jacobs – His Three Daughters (Netflix), Walter Salles – I’m Still Here (Sony Pictures Classics), Todd Phillips – Joker: Folie à Deux (Warner Bros), Clint Eastwood – Juror #2 (Warner Bros), Yorgos Lanthimos – Kind of Kindness (Searchlight Pictures), Pablo Larraín – Maria (Netflix), Francis Ford Coppola – Megalopolis (Lionsgate), Marielle Heller – Nightbitch (Searchlight Pictures), Joshua Oppenheimer – The End (NEON), William Goldenberg – Unstoppable (Amazon MGM), John Crowley – We Live in Time (A24), John M. Chu – Wicked Part I (Warner Bros)