Oscar Nominations for the 87th Academy Awards: Birdman and Budapest Lead with 9 Each

Erik Anderson January 15, 2015

The Oscar nominations for the 87th Academy Awards are in and Birdman and The Grand Budapest Hotel, as expected, top the nomination totals with nine apiece. For the first time in three years, the Best Picture total was only eight films. Many thought that, with such a packed year, we’d see a full 10 for the first time since the expanded field allowed for 5-10 nominees. In a strange turn, Foxcatcher didn’t get a Best Picture nomination but its director, Cannes winner Bennett Miller, did. This marks his 2nd Best Director nomination (the first was for Capote). And for the first time in a while there is not a single $100M grosser in the bunch. With Gone Girl and Unbroken snubbed the highest grossing film, at the moment, is The Grand Budapest Hotel at $59M. But, look for that to change as both The Imitation Game and American Sniper should pass that rather quickly, possibly even this weekend. Speaking of Gone Girl, that film flopped famously this morning, not even showing up in Adapted Screenplay. Only Rosamund Pike was spared with her Actress in a Leading Role nomination.

Marion Cotillard stunned as she got a Best Actress nomination for Two Days, One Night despite hitting zero precursors. Quite the opposite of 2011’s Rust & Bone where she managed every single one only to be stopped at Oscar’s door. She pushed ahead of Jennifer Aniston in Cake, who came in with SAG, Golden Globe and BFCA nominations.

In Best Actor, Steve Carell rode his SAG, BAFTA (in supporting) and Golden Globe nominations for Foxcatcher to Oscar gold and Bradley Cooper’s late-breaking American Sniper pushed him ahead of SAG, Globe, BFCA and BAFTA nominee Jake Gyllenhaal in Nightcrawler. This marks Cooper’s third nomination in a row, a feat that hasn’t happened since Russell Crowe’s threepeat 15 years ago. Speaking of American Sniper, that film performed exceptionally well, also hitting Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Film Editing, Best Sound Editing and Best Sound Mixing. Missing from that bunch was two-time Best Director Oscar winner Clint Eastwood. He was nominated for the DGA just last week but curiously snubbed today.

In the Supporting categories, Actor went 5/5 with the Screen Actors Guild but Actress deviated, earning Laura Dern her second Oscar nomination of her career, for Wild.

Other surprise snubs included Life Itself, the Roger Ebert film, in Documentary Feature and Force Majeure in Foreign Language Film. The perceived frontrunner for Best Animated Feature Film, The LEGO Movie, was snubbed despite the film’s song getting a nomination. After all of the ballyhoo over Selma, the film managed just two nominations; Best Picture and Best Music – Original Song. Even Paramount’s other Oscar hopeful, Interstellar, managed five nominations (all in tech categories).

BEST PICTURE

American Sniper
Birdman or (the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
Boyhood
The Grand Budapest Hotel
The Imitation Game
Selma
The Theory of Everything
Whiplash

BEST DIRECTOR

Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), Alejandro G. Iñárritu
Boyhood, Richard Linklater
Foxcatcher, Bennett Miller
The Grand Budapest Hotel, Wes Anderson
The Imitation Game, Morten Tyldum

ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE

Steve Carell, Foxcatcher
Bradley Cooper, American Sniper
Benedict Cumberbatch, The Imitation Game
Michael Keaton, Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
Eddie Redmayne, The Theory of Everything

ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE

Marion Cotillard, Two Days, One Night
Felicity Jones, The Theory of Everything
Julianne Moore, Still Alice
Rosamund Pike, Gone Girl
Reese Witherspoon, Wild

ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE

Robert Duvall, The Judge
Ethan Hawke, Boyhood
Edward Norton, Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
Mark Ruffalo, Foxcatcher
J.K. Simmons, Whiplash

ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE

Patricia Arquette, Boyhood
Laura Dern, Wild
Keira Knightley, The Imitation Game
Emma Stone, Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
Meryl Streep, Into the Woods

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE FILM

Big Hero 6
The Boxtrolls
How to Train Your Dragon 2
Song of the Sea
The Tale of The Princess Kaguya

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

Birdman
The Grand Budapest Hotel
Ida
Mr. Turner
Unbroken

BEST COSTUME DESIGN

The Grand Budapest Hotel
Inherent Vice
Into the Woods
Maleficent
Mr. Turner

BEST DOCUMENTARY – FEATURE

CITIZENFOUR
Finding Vivian Maier
Last Days in Vietnam
The Salt of the Earth
Virunga

BEST DOCUMENTARY – SHORT SUBJECT

Crisis Hotline: Veterans Press 1
Joanna
Our Curse
The Reaper (La Parka)
White Earth

BEST FILM EDITING

American Sniper
Boyhood
The Grand Budapest Hotel
The Imitation Game
Whiplash

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM

Ida (Poland)
Leviathan (Russia)
Tangerines (Estonia)
Timbuktu (Mauritania)
Wild Tales (Argentina)

BEST MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING

Foxcatcher
The Grand Budapest Hotel
Guardians of the Galaxy

BEST MUSIC – ORIGINAL SCORE

The Grand Budapest Hotel
The Imitation Game
Interstellar
Mr. Turner
The Theory of Everything

BEST MUSIC – ORIGINAL SONG

“Lost Stars” from “Begin Again
“Everything is Awesome” from “The LEGO Movie
“Glory” from “Selma
“What is Love” from “Rio 2
“I’m Not Gonna Miss You” from “Glen Campbell: I’ll Be Me

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN

The Grand Budapest Hotel
The Imitation Game
Interstellar
Into the Woods
Mr. Turner

BEST SHORT FILM – ANIMATED

The Bigger Picture
The Dam Keeper
Feast
Me and My Moulton
A Single Life

BEST SHORT FILM – LIVE ACTION

Aya
Boogaloo and Graham
Butter Lamp
Parvaneh
The Phone Call

BEST SOUND EDITING

American Sniper
Birdman
The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
Interstellar
Unbroken

BEST SOUND MIXING

American Sniper
Birdman
Interstellar
Unbroken
Whiplash

WRITING – Adapted Screenplay

American Sniper, Written by Jason Hall
The Imitation Game, Written by Graham Moore
Inherent Vice, Written for the screen by Paul Thomas Anderson
The Theory of Everything, Screenplay by Anthony McCarten
Whiplash, Written by Damien Chazelle

WRITING – Original Screenplay

Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), Written by Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Nicolás Giacobone, Alexander Dinelaris, Jr. & Armando Bo
Boyhood, Written by Richard Linklater
Foxcatcher, Written by E. Max Frye and Dan Futterman
The Grand Budapest Hotel, Screenplay by Wes Anderson; Story by Wes Anderson & Hugo Guinness
Nightcrawler, Written by Dan Gilroy

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS

Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
Guardians of the Galaxy
Interstellar
X-Men: Days of Future Past

TOTALS

Birdman – 9
The Grand Budapest Hotel – 9
The Imitation Game – 8
American Sniper – 6
Boyhood – 6
Foxcatcher – 5
Interstellar – 5
The Theory of Everything – 5
Whiplash – 5
Mr. Turner – 4
Into the Woods – 3
Unbroken – 3
Ida – 2
Inherent Vice – 2
Selma – 2
Wild – 2

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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.