When the Oscar nominations 2024 are announced on Tuesday, January 23, from the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Los Angeles, so many of the biggest film stories of 2023 will get their latest, most thrilling twist. Can Barbie and Oppenheimer ride their box office dominance to equally huge Oscar nomination tallies? Can Cord Jefferson and Celine Song pull off the exceedingly rare feat of getting best-picture nominations for their first-ever features? And hey, how will the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fare?
One thing’s for certain: Oscar records will be broken, surprises will be in store, and we’ll be here to watch it all happen. Read below for a complete list of our Oscar predictions.
BEST PICTURE
American Fiction
Anatomy of a Fall
Barbie
The Holdovers
Killers of the Flower Moon
Maestro
Past Lives
Poor Things
Oppenheimer
The Zone of Interest
Usually, we would warn ourselves against predicting that the Oscars will choose the same 10 films as the Producers Guild of America, an organization that often makes room for a rogue blockbuster (Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Crazy Rich Asians, Deadpool) that doesn’t end up on the Academy’s final list. But this year the producers zagged in the other direction, including international offerings Anatomy of a Fall and The Zone of Interest, which suggests those films are in an even stronger position than we thought to edge out more populist Hollywood productions like The Color Purple and Air.
But that’s what’s happening near the bottom of the lineup; let’s start at the top. Oppenheimer is holding firm to its presumed-front-runner status following its high-profile wins at the Golden Globes and Critics Choice Awards, and though it still has a road to travel to a win, a nomination is assured. Same goes for its summer box office twin, Barbie, and Killers of the Flower Moon, both of which have had strong showings with every imaginable precursor. If we’re making a top five of this category, we’ll round it out with Poor Things—the Globe comedy winner over Barbie, and a PGA and Directors Guild nominee—and American Fiction, which got a major boost from its SAG ensemble nomination.
From there we have some strong contenders with a few caveats that shouldn’t keep them out of this 10. The Holdovers has been warmly received all season, and star Da’Vine Joy Randolph is steamrolling the supporting-actress category; its small but mighty ensemble missed the top SAG nomination, but we can’t imagine the film missing out here. Maestro has been driven more by buzz for its lead performances than by director Bradley Cooper’s achievements, but a film this gorgeously mounted and moving ought to get a best-picture inclusion too. And Past Lives has been steady as the season’s heartfelt indie that could, with that Producers Guild nomination proving it has the attention of a wide swath of the industry.
Which brings us back to where we started. Palme d’Or winner Anatomy of a Fall has been a strong contender from its Cannes premiere, which makes it very likely to follow fellow Palme winners Triangle of Sadness and Parasite into this lineup. That leaves just a single slot—just one!—that’s felt up for grabs for weeks now. It really comes down to looking at the PGA industry support for The Zone of Interest versus the SAG industry support for The Color Purple, which earned a best-ensemble nomination. In this case, we’re just going with our gut—and with what Oscar voters around Los Angeles keep emphasizing—and predicting that Zone rounds out the 10. —Katey Rich
BEST DIRECTOR
Jonathan Glazer, The Zone of Interest
Yorgos Lanthimos, Poor Things
Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer
Martin Scorsese, Killers of the Flower Moon
Justine Triet, Anatomy of a Fall
This is a very competitive year at the Oscars, with major films coming from major directors. Christopher Nolan, Martin Scorsese, Greta Gerwig, Yorgos Lanthimos, Alexander Payne—these five have all been nominated in this category before, make up the group recognized this year by the DGA, and arguably represent the strongest contenders for best picture right now. So, easy enough to predict, right? Not so fast. Few Academy branches are as predictably unpredictable as that of the directors, and indeed, it feels unlikely that this international-skewing group will recognize five American films, however popular they prove to be in the overall nominations.
