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Nominations voting is from January 8-12, 2025, with official Oscar nominations announced January 17, 2025. Final voting is February 11-18, 2025. And finally, the 97th Oscars telecast will be broadcast on Sunday, March 2 and air live on ABC at 7:00 p.m. ET/ 4:00 p.m. PT. We update our picks through awards season, so keep checking IndieWire for all our 2025 Oscar predictions.
The State of the Race
With the announcement of the PGA Awards 2025 nominations, just about every major Oscar precursor has shown its cards in terms of what it thinks deserves a nomination slot in Best Picture. And ultimately, there has been less of a consensus this year.
For instance, had you asked the majority of prognosticators the day before PGA nominations dropped, they would probably tell you that Paramount Pictures’ “September 5” is out of the race. But given how the PGA Awards predicted the full Best Picture lineup and winner last year, its recognition of the newsroom thriller is to be taken seriously.
Now being at the end of the road, the even bigger surprise is the Golden Globes, in hindsight, being way more on the money than it has ever been. Usually, its Best Motion Picture – Drama category is the one to watch, with Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy being a hub of random populist fare. But this year, one can make the argument that all 12 nominees in the combined categories have a shot at an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture.
“September 5” was there too, nominated in Drama next to “Nickel Boys,” one of the films snubbed by the PGA Awards. “Challengers,” which also missed out on a PGA Awards nod, was maybe the weakest link in Musical or Comedy, as far as Best Picture potential goes, but the Globes category as a whole included “Anora,” “A Real Pain,” “The Substance,” “Wicked,” and winner “Emilia Pérez,” which have all won and/or been nominated for major guild and critics awards, making them highly favored to be one of the 10 Oscar nomination slots.
What seems to be falling to the wayside this year, as indicated by the SAG Awards 2025 nominations, are films led by a Black cast, and films that are not in English. To the first point, “Sing Sing,” led by recent Oscar nominee Colman Domingo, was snubbed by both the Golden Globes and PGA Awards, meaning it falling below expectations in the Best Picture race has been consistent. It also getting snubbed for a Best Ensemble nomination at the SAG Awards was especially ominous, as many expected that actors, who make up both the voting body in SAG as well as the biggest branch of the Academy, would appreciate how the film focused on the healing qualities of their profession. “The Piano Lesson,” another film with a majority Black cast, also has had minimal impact this awards season, even though the previous two Denzel Washington-produced August Wilson adaptations were Oscar winners.
International titles have fared slightly better, with “Emilia Pérez,” France’s submission for Best International Feature, being an awards season juggernaut. It is the only film considered a lock for a Best Picture nomination whose characters primarily speak a language other than English. It would be the first Spanish language film since “Roma” to receive a Best Picture nomination. That’s still progress in one respect, but we are coming off of a previous season that saw both “Anatomy of a Fall” and “The Zone of Interest” make it into Best Picture, and win several Oscars. International contenders like “All We Imagine As Light,” “I’m Still Here,” and “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” are not receiving the same treatment as those films, despite having once been on similar trajectories. The only main difference is that they’re not set in Europe or North America.
There are probably more films that would be a surprise snub than there are films that would be a major surprise nominee, so it is probably best to say that “A Real Pain” and “Dune: Part Two” are the two consistently recognized films that are in the weakest position as nomination voting comes to a close.
Potential nominees are listed in alphabetical order, below.
Frontrunners:
“A Complete Unknown”
“A Real Pain”
“Anora”
“The Brutalist”
“Conclave”
“Dune: Part Two”
“Emilia Pérez”
“Nickel Boys”
“The Substance”
“Wicked”
Contenders:
“All We Imagine As Light”
“Challengers”
“September 5”
“Sing Sing”
“The Seed of the Sacred Fig”
English (US) ·