Final 2020 Oscar Predictions – ORIGINAL SCORE

It’s going to happen again. Thomas Newman, a 15-time Oscar nominee (14 for Score, one for Song) is going to lose Original Score for a Sam Mendes film that’s winning Best Picture.

After two years in a row where we saw longtime nominees like Roger Deakins and Kevin O’Connor finally become Oscar winners it seemed like Newman’s road to a little gold man was set.

But he won’t be losing to his cousin Randy, also nominated here (for Marriage Story) and a 22-time nominee/two-time Oscar winner. Nope, he’ll be losing to Hildur Guðnadóttir for her Critics Choice, Golden Globe, BAFTA and Society of Composers and Lyricists-winning score of Joker.

Guðnadóttir’s score is a powerful, pulsating masterpiece and her win will be historic; we haven’t had a female winner in this category in over 20 years. She’ll be the first since the Academy merged the (short lived, after going through more changes than any other Oscar category) previously split Comedy and Drama Score categories in 2000 (incidentally, the year after Newman lost for American Beauty) into one. I’m not completely ruling out a Newman win for 1917, it’s definitely possible. But even with the film’s near sweep of BAFTA, Newman’s score was one of only two losses the film took. There would have to be a rooted, concerted effort by the Academy to change that.

Here are my ranked Final Oscar predictions for Original Score.