FINAL 2021 Oscar Nomination Predictions: ORIGINAL SCORE

Soul, News of the World and Mank are locked in pretty tight here. Then it’s a three-way race for two spots. Or is it four…

After hitting every precursor except the Globe, Minari‘s Emile Mosseri will attempt to earn his first nomination against two previous Oscar winners, Ludwig Göransson (Tenet) and Alexandre Desplat (The Midnight Sky). Minari just bested them both at BAFTA this morning, which should push it into top tier contention. So maybe the fight is just between Göransson and Desplat.

That’s not to say there can’t be some spoiler activity from Terence Blanchard’s Da 5 Bloods, but the path for that film has been rather bleak. Lolita Ritmanis’ score for the Latvian Oscar entry Blizzard of Souls surprised everyone when it showed up on the shortlist and then she won the Society of Composers and Lyricists award over heavy competition. Would not count her out. She is the only woman in contention and last year Hildur Guðnadóttir’s win for Joker made her the first woman to win since the Original Dramatic Score and Original Musical or Comedy Score categories were combined in 2000.

But where I think we could see the spoiler arrive would be Daniel Pemberton’s score for The Trial of the Chicago 7. As a top tier Best Picture contender and also one for a large number of nominations, it could jump in and upset here, even though it comes in with just a Hollywood Music in Media nomination. Then again, The Little Things…Thomas Newman…15 nominations. What to do, what to do.

Here are my final 2021 Oscar nomination predictions in Original Score.

• 1. Soul (Disney/Pixar) – BAFTA, BFCA, GG, HMMA, SCL
  Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross and Jon Batiste
• 2. News of the World (Universal Pictures) – BAFTA, BFCA, GG, HMMA, SCL
  James Newton Howard
• 3. Mank (Netflix) – BAFTA, BFCA, GG, HMMA, SCL
  Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross
• 4. Minari (A24) – BAFTA, BFCA, HMMA, SCL
  Emile Mosseri
• 5. The Midnight Sky (Netflix) – BFCA, GG, HMMA
  Alexandre Desplat

Watch out for: Tenet (Warner Bros) – BFCA, GG, HMMA, SCL

Oscar shortlist contenders: Ammonite, Blizzard of Souls, Da 5 Bloods, The Invisible Man, Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey, The Life Ahead, The Little Things, Mulan

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Erik Anderson

Erik Anderson is the founder/owner and Editor-in-Chief of AwardsWatch and has always loved all things Oscar, having watched the Academy Awards since he was in single digits; making lists, rankings and predictions throughout the show. This led him down the path to obsessing about awards. Much later, he found himself in film school and the film forums of GoldDerby, and then migrated over to the former Oscarwatch (now AwardsDaily), before breaking off to create AwardsWatch in 2013.

He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Hollywood Critics Association (HCA) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.

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