EW predicts the Academy Award nominations, with major contenders including "Dune: Part Two" and "Anora" to performances by Nicole Kidman, Timothée Chalamet, and more.
Remember the great Barbenheimer awards gauntlet of 2024? Maybe? Well, Entertainment Weekly's 2025 Oscar nominations predictions are here and ready to introduce a whole new (slightly less pink) crop of contenders set to duke it out for cinematic supremacy in the awards race ahead.
With the festival circuit already birthing strong contenders for Best Picture and acting (Anora, Emilia Pérez, and last year's TIFF award-winning Sing Sing), things are looking bright for the likes of director Sean Baker, actress Mikey Madison, the Pérez ensemble, and Colman Domingo, hot off his first-ever career Academy Award nod for Rustin.
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All eyes are also on Angelina Jolie as she transforms body, soul, and voice (!) to become opera singer Maria Callas in Maria, a title that's (so far) leading the charge in an increasingly crowded Best Actress race that will surely heat up as the race progresses.
Until then, see EW's 2025 Oscar nominations predictions for the big six categories below — from Best Picture to all of the major acting brackets — updating throughout the awards season ahead.
The 2025 Oscars air Sunday, March 2 on ABC.
Best Picture
It's far too early to pinpoint exactly which films will rise to the top, but award-winning festival standouts such as Anora (the Cannes Palme d'Or winner) and Emilia Pérez (TIFF People's Choice runner-up) have already emerged as the cream of the crop so far. If there was any doubt about the increasing awards strength of these worldly cinema summits, let's look back one year to Justine Triet's Anatomy of a Fall, which also sustained from Cannes all the way through to the Oscars. Dune: Part Two also emerged from the first half of the year with a healthy box office fueling its run, which is only helped further by the awards success of the first Dune film in 2021. The other slots are far less certain at this stage, but Conclave, The Brutalist, and Sing Sing are all, on paper, surefire hits that will likely speak directly to Academy voters.
Anora
Conclave
The Brutalist
Emilia Pérez
Sing Sing
The Piano Lesson
Dune: Part Two
Blitz
A Real Pain
Queer
Other contenders: Nickel Boys; Gladiator II; A Complete Unknown; The Room Next Door; September 5
Best Director
Making a safe bet is always, naturally, a gamble when it comes to predicting the Best Director race. Most voters in this branch stay the course, aligning with the rest of the industry on a handful of filmmakers behind the year's most-praised pictures. There's typically one or two surprises in the category every year, as the branch continues inviting a more global voting base into its ranks. This often results in an international director squeezing past more well-known directors, and outside of the usual suspects behind marquee entires in the race this year, the genre-defying, visionary spectacle of Coralie Fargeat's The Substance (a popular title among prestige crowds at Cannes, mind you) could land her a spot in the category this year. Other than that, it's wise to predict the men responsible for the, well, safest bets.
Sean Baker, Anora
Brady Corbet, The Brutalist
Denis Villeneuve, Dune: Part Two
Edward Berger, Conclave
Coralie Fargeat, The Substance
Other contenders: Jacques Audiard, Emilia Pérez; Pedro Almodóvar, The Room Next Door; Steve McQueen, Blitz; Greg Kwedar, Sing Sing; RaMell Ross, Nickel Boys; Malcolm Washington, The Piano Lesson; Ridley Scott, Gladiator II
Best Actor
Actors? Playing real-life historical figures? Or — gasp — playing gay? You don't say! While there are a few contenders who fall into this category this year, the work leading men bring to the table is no less exciting. Hot off his nomination for Rustin, Domingo is eyeing up another strong bid for awards attention in Sing Sing, a project that actually debuted on the festival circuit last year, though goodwill for the film and its leading performance has carried it through to this year's competition. Other likely nominees hail from Best Picture contenders (Ralph Fiennes, Adrien Brody), and while Timothée Chalamet's transformation into Bob Dylan for James Mangold's A Complete Unknown feels right up the Academy's alley, its Dec. 25 release date feels too late for the film overall to make much of an impact on the race at large.
Colman Domingo, Sing Sing
Ralph Fiennes, Conclave
Adrien Brody, The Brutalist
Timothée Chalamet, A Complete Unknown
John David Washington, The Piano Lesson
Other contenders: Daniel Craig, Queer; Andrew Garfield, We Live in Time; Sebastian Stan, The Apprentice; Paul Mescal, Gladiator II; Joaquin Phoenix, Joker: Folie à Deux; Jharrel Jerome, Unstoppable
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Best Actress
While Pablo Larraín has directed three leading stars to Best Actress nominations for playing real-life cultural figures, his last effort, 2021's Spencer, barely crept over the threshold to score Kristen Stewart her first-ever acting nod. Angelina Jolie's turn as ill-fated opera singer Maria Callas in Maria has much larger backing behind it, with Netflix securing distribution rights to the title following its successful bow at the fall festivals. Jolie's superstar status also gives it a large dose of built-in star power, as she has two Oscars (one competitive, one honorary) already to her name. Mikey Madison's leading turn in Anora, however, occupies the other side of that coin, as the budding, rising star's central performance would mark her first nod at the top of a promising career. Honoring such ingenue status is an increasingly common thing in this category, which could also mark a historic nod for buzzy Emilia Pérez star Karla Sofia Gascón, who'd become the first trans woman to appear in this category if she's nominated. Other mainstays in well-received films include Tilda Swinton in The Room Next Door (both Antonio Banderas and Penélope Cruz have reaped nods for work in Pedro Almodóvar's recent titles) and Babygirl's Nicole Kidman, who won Best Actress in Venice.
Angelina Jolie, Maria
Mikey Madison, Anora
Tilda Swinton, The Room Next Door
Nicole Kidman, Babygirl
Karla Sofia Gascón, Emilia Pérez
Other contenders: Demi Moore,The Substance; Amy Adams, Nightbitch; Zendaya, Challengers; Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Hard Truths; June Squibb, Thelma; Saoirse Ronan, The Outrun
Best Supporting Actor
It's hard not to predict that the pattern of excellence ignited by Succession will continue as its stars navigate their post-series careers. Former colleagues on the HBO drama, Jeremy Strong and Kieran Culkin could find themselves nominated in the same category this year for their supporting roles in The Apprentice and A Real Pain, respectively. Strong's place in the race is far less assured at this point, but we're putting him at our No. 1 position for now because of the potential for The Apprentice — the much-buzzed-about chronicle of Donald Trump's early business career in New York City — to catch on during election season. Its distributor, Briarcliff, is a relatively small one, so strong audience word-of-mouth will need to overcome the film's polarized reception from critics thus far. The film will, though, land among the liberal set of actors voting for the Screen Actors Guild Awards, and if it catches on there, there's no stopping Strong's wonderful performance as Roy Cohn. Support from the same group could also boost the supporting stars of Challengers into the race, so don't count out Mike Faist or Josh O'Connor for their work in a film that drove pop culture conversation — and internet chatter — earlier this year.
Jeremy Strong, The Apprentice
Kieran Culkin, A Real Pain
Stanley Tucci, Conclave
Clarence Maclin, Sing Sing
Josh O'Connor, Challengers
Other contenders: Guy Pearce, The Brutalist; Samuel L. Jackson, The Piano Lesson; Mike Faist, Challengers; Denzel Washington, Gladiator II; John Lithgow, Conclave; Edward Norton, A Complete Unknown; Yura Borisov, Anora
Best Supporting Actress
Danielle Deadwyler suffered one of the biggest snubs in recent Oscars history when she missed out on a nod for her work in 2022's Till. Now, all signs point to awards bodies course-correcting and finally giving her the recognition she deserved then for her equally deserving work in the upcoming August Wilson adaptation The Piano Lesson, an ensemble that's also building buzz for actors Samuel L. Jackson and John David Washington. Speaking of ensembles, if Emilia Pérez keeps building in the weeks ahead, Zoe Saldaña could be looking at her first nomination as well — especially after she shared Cannes' Best Actress prize with the aforementioned Gascón and fellow supporting actress Selena Gomez, who could very well end up with a nod here, too. Perennial nominee Saoirse Ronan is a safe choice at this point (could she be a double nominee?!), as is Felicity Jones for her supporting turn in the buzzy Brutalist. Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor's performance in Nickel Boys is creeping into pundits' list of expected contenders as well, but don't count out a peripheral contender like Jennifer Lopez, whose turn in Unstoppable hits all the right notes and comes wrapped in a crowd-pleasing, inspirational sports drama.
Danielle Deadwyler, The Piano Lesson
Zoe Saldaña, Emilia Pérez
Saoirse Ronan, Blitz
Felicity Jones, The Brutalist
Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Nickel Boys
Other contenders: Zendaya, Dune: Part Two; Selena Gomez, Emilia Pérez; Isabella Rossellini, Conclave; Natasha Lyonne, His Three Daughters; Jennifer Lopez, Unstoppable; Maria Bakalova, The Apprentice; Lady Gaga, Joker: Folie à Deux
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