2025 Oscar Predictions: The Awards Alchemist Studies the Race After Critics Choice, DGA and PGA

This past weekend, those who enjoy forecasting the Oscar race were finally given some much-needed clarity. For the first time this awards cycle, we have a clear frontrunner for Best Picture. Coming into the weekend, there were as many as six viable contenders for the top prize, but following Anora’s sweep of the Directors Guild (DGA), Producers Guild (PGA), and Critics Choice (CCA) awards, this race feels very close to being decided.

Best Picture contenders that received nominations for the DGA, PGA, and CCA Best Picture include Conclave, A Complete Unknown, The Brutalist, Anora, and Emilia Perez. Wicked, likely in the sixth spot, missed a DGA nomination (and lacks nominations for Director and Screenplay at the Oscars), though it did receive a SAG Ensemble nomination that The Brutalist missed. So, those were your six major contenders going into the weekend.

It had been a long 33 days between the Globes and CCA, and during that time, we were in a bit of a holding pattern. This year, there was already no clear frontrunner, making the wait feel especially long. But now, everything has changed after Anora‘s impressive trifecta.

Let’s take a look at the impact of key awards bodies on the race for Best Picture and other categories in the Academy’s preferential ballot era (2009-present), starting with the CCA.

In the past 15 years, nine of the CCA winners for Best Picture have gone on to win the Oscar (60%). That number is even higher for Director, where 11 CCA winners have taken home the Oscar (including the last eight). However, that streak will end this year, as in a surprise twist, the CCA awarded Jon M. Chu for Wicked, despite his absence from the Oscar Director race.

Looking at the acting categories over the last 15 years, CCA winners have gone on to win the Oscar 10 times in Actor and nine times in Actress. This means that Adrien Brody (The Brutalist) and Demi Moore (The Substance) are still leaders in their respective categories after taking both the Globe and CCA. Even more striking is the crossover in the Supporting categories: CCA winners have overlapped with the Oscars 13 times in both Supporting Actor and Supporting Actress.

Other categories where the CCA has successfully predicted Oscar winners (10 or more times) include Cinematography (11; Nosferatu’s Jarin Blaschke won CCA), Production Design (10; Wicked’s Nathan Crowley and Lee Sandales), Costumes (12; Wicked’s Akron-native Paul Tazewell), Song (10; “El Mal” from Emilia Pérez), and Animated (12; The Wild Robot). While Cinematography remains tough to call, most of these categories seem poised for an Oscar repeat. The Brutalist’s Lol Crawley remains my front-runner for Cinematography. Another category that has done well with Oscar following a CCA win is Score (11), but Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross won CCA, and their work on Challengers is not nominated at Oscar.

While Best Picture was Anora’s only win at CCA, it was hardly done winning prizes this weekend. Sean Baker took home the DGA prize for Directorial Achievement in Theatrical Feature Film, an accomplishment that overlaps with Oscar’s Best Director winner ten of the last eleven years (Sam Mendes won DGA for 1917, while Bong Joon Ho won the Oscar for Parasite). The only other DGA winner to miss at Oscar in the preferential ballot era was Ben Affleck (Argo), who was famously snubbed for a nomination at Oscar.   

While the Globes, CCA, and DGA all saw unique winners for the first time since 2002, the DGA remains the most accurate precursor, with a record of correctly predicting the Oscar winner 88% of the time across its 77-year history. The DGA winner’s film has also won Best Picture in 75% of cases during that span.

Finally, and most importantly, the sweep was capped with Anora winning the PGA Award for Outstanding Producer of Theatrical Motion Pictures – a prize that has matched the Oscar for Best Picture 12 times in the preferential ballot era (80%). Only The Big Short, La La Land, and 1917 failed to repeat their PGA wins at the Oscars. This is especially significant since the PGA is the only major awards body that uses the same voting system as the Academy for Best Picture, making it the ultimate litmus test for how a film handles preferential balloting.

The DGA and PGA have matched winners 26 times in the 35 years the PGA has existed, with 18 of those matches resulting in wins for both Picture and Director at the Oscars (69%).

A special shoutout to Telluride, which remains one of the most important film festivals of the season. If Anora does indeed go on to win Best Picture, it will be the 12th time in the last 16 years that the Best Picture winner made a stop at Telluride. (The Hurt Locker, Green Book, CODA, and Everything Everywhere All At Once were the exceptions.)

If Anora wins, it will join Marty (1955) and Parasite (2019) as the only Palme d’Or winners at Cannes to take home Best Picture. As Erik pointed out on X, this will also be the first time since Marty that a Palme d’Or winner also won the DGA for directing.

The other significant event this weekend was the Annies, where DreamWorks’ The Wild Robot took home an incredible nine awards, including Best Feature. Over the 23 years that the Oscars have had an Animated Feature category, the Annie winner for Best Feature has gone on to win the Oscar 15 times. The Wild Robot also won the CCA for Animated Feature (which has matched the Oscar 18 times) and the PGA for Outstanding Producer of Animated Theatrical Motion Pictures. I had the pleasure of sitting with the fantastic team behind The Wild Robot at the CCA – what an incredible group, from director Chris Sanders (up for his fourth nomination and still chasing his first win) to composer Kris Bowers (an Oscar-winner in his own right).

For a season as unpredictable as this one – featuring six strong contenders, wildfires in LA, and social media controversies – I’ll echo the sentiment I shared with KTLA’s Scott Mantz at the CCA: expect the unexpected. While Anora now stands as the clear frontrunner, this race isn’t over yet. We don’t yet know what was second or third on that PGA ballot, and who’s to say what could happen if that number-two or number-three film takes home both SAG Ensemble and BAFTA’s Best Picture?

For now, I have to reluctantly move off my pick of Conclave for Best Picture, which I’ve held onto since my initial predictions back in March. I held on as long as I could. While I still see a path for Conclave to win, it would be a mistake not to list Anora on top at this stage.

Here are my updated predictions, one last time before I finalize my thoughts before March 2.

*Ineligible for WGA

*Ineligible for WGA

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Mark Johnson

Mark Johnson has been a prominent voice in film coverage and the Oscar race since 2009. He launched his career with his own website, Award Contenders, before joining forces with Clayton Davis at Awards Circuit from 2011 to 2020. After continuing his insightful work at Awards Daily from 2020 to 2024, Mark now contributes to both The Contending and AwardsWatch. His renowned Oscar predictions column, The Awards Alchemist (formerly Good As Gold), has solidified his reputation in the industry. A member of the Critics Choice Association, Mark regularly attends major film festivals, including Telluride, Nantucket, and Middleburg, offering in-depth analysis and predictions throughout awards season.

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