FINAL 2025 Oscar Predictions: ORIGINAL SCORE, ORIGINAL SONG, SOUND

Original Score this season has been something of a wash. With Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s thumping beats of Challengers winning the Golden Globe and Critics Choice then getting snubbed by the Academy, we’re left sifting through the Hollywood Music in Media and Society of Composers and Lyricists nominees and winners and, of course, BAFTA. Surprisingly, the bombastic sounds of Volker Bertelmann’s disruptive score in Conclave, while nominated everywhere, didn’t manage to land any wins. Berterlmann won the Oscar for his war score for Edward Berger’s 2022 film All Quiet on the Western Front. That really leaves just Daniel Blumberg’s swelling and immersive score for The Brutalist as the frontrunner here, with BAFTA and SCL in hand. As odd as it seems, the SCL win is the only guild win for the film all season. Can’t entirely count out the other three scores, all of which also earned sound nominations but they do feel distant compared to the top two.

Is this finally Diane Warren’s shot at a competitive Oscar? I know that all season, everything has been pointing to “El Mal” from Emilia Pérez, the centerpiece musical number for locked supporting actress frontrunner Zoe Saldaña, almost as a default. But it’s no slam dunk in an open season in this category as well. “El Mal” won the Globe and Critics Choice, “Like a Bird” from Sing Sing won the Guild of Music Supervisors, “Never Too Late” from the Elton John doc won HMMA (documentary) and perennial nominee Warren won both HMMA and SCL, two places she’s highly popular. But, as is often the case with Warren’s nominated songs, they either come from obscure films or little seen ones. The Six Triple Eight, a Netflix title, is sort of in a nebulous middle ground. A big winner at the NAACP Image Awards, but it missed nods at GG and CCA and, as is also often for Warren songs, the only nomination for the film. Look at that vs the field-best 13 nominations for Emilia Pérez and that, even in a pre-Karla Sofía Gascóntroversy, EP was probably locked or close to locked for three categories, including this one. So the question remains, have enough people heard Warren’s song and care that she has 15 nominations and 15 losses? Sure, she has that Honorary Oscar (and one of her houses burned down in the January fires, which undoubtedly has earned her some deserved sympathy) but what’s it going to take for the overall voting body to push her to a win vs the music branch who consistently nominates her? This is probably the closest she’s been to clinching it since “Til It Happens to You” but I think she might have to wait just a bit longer.

With BAFTA, MPSE and AMPS in hand it seems like Dune: Part Two should be able to take the Sound Oscar but with such a meager nomination haul for the film vs the first, it’s no slam dunk. Especially after getting beat by A Complete Unknown at CAS. There’s a real path for that film too, but also for the only two nominees in the category that managed an editing nom – Emilia Pérez and Wicked, both of which won MPSE awards in their respective music and international categories.

Here are my final 2025 Oscar predictions in Original Score, Original Song and Sound for the 97th Academy Awards.

ORIGINAL SCORE

ORIGINAL SONG

SOUND

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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), Critics Choice Association (CCA), San Francisco Bay Area Film Critics Circle (SFBAFCC) 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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