FINAL 2023 Oscar Predictions: VISUAL EFFECTS

In what should be the easiest victory of the night, Avatar: The Way of Water should swim away with the win for Visual Effects are dominating with BAFTA, Critics’ Choice and a record-setting sweep of nine Visual Effects Society (VES) wins from its also record-setting 14 nominations, where it only lost when competing against itself.
Anything else would be an earth-shaking upset, even more so than Ex Machina beating out Best Picture nominees The Revenant and Mad Max: Fury Road in 2015.
Here are my final 2023 Oscar winner predictions for Visual Effects.
| 1. Avatar: The Way of Water (20th Century Studios) – BAFTA, CCA, VES Joe Letteri, Richard Baneham, Eric Saindon and Daniel Barrett |
| 2. Top Gun: Maverick (Paramount Pictures) – BAFTA, CCA, VES Ryan Tudhope, Seth Hill, Bryan Litson and Scott R. Fisher |
| 3. The Batman (Warner Bros) – BAFTA, CCA, VES Dan Lemmon, Russell Earl, Anders Langlands and Dominic Tuohy |
| 4. All Quiet on the Western Front (Netflix) – BAFTA Frank Petzold, Viktor Müller, Markus Frank and Kamil Jafar |
| 5. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (Walt Disney/Marvel Studios) – CCA Geoffrey Baumann, Craig Hammack, R. Christopher White and Dan Sudick |
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