.png)
4 hours ago
5
While this time last year we might have already been aware of Oscar-winning films like One Battle After Another and Hamnet, Sunday’s ceremony showed that the race isn’t always easy to predict so far out. Horror films like Sinners, Weapons and Frankenstein and the phenomenon of KPop Demon Hunters were all not seen as contenders, while international films continue to surprise.
It makes this annual game increasingly difficult but here once again are some absurdly early picks for next year’s Oscars:
Aaron Sorkin
It’s never wise to bet against Aaron Sorkin, the Bafta, Emmy and Golden Globe winner who won his sole Oscar for The Social Network screenplay. Much has changed, all of it for the worse, since that early look at Facebook in 2010, and Sorkin is trying to cover some of it in The Social Reckoning, an unconventional semi-sequel that will focus on the 2021 leak from whistleblower Frances Haugen. She’ll be played by last year’s best actress winner, Mikey Madison (who reportedly made the wise decision to pick this over Star Wars and Colleen Hoover movies), with Mark Zuckerberg now played by The Apprentice nominee Jeremy Strong. It’s by no means a sure thing (Sorkin’s last film was hit-and-miss biopic Being the Ricardos and internet films are notoriously hard to nail) but the Academy loves him (even The Trial of the Chicago 7 scored him a nod), and the time is never not right for a Facebook takedown.
Sandra Hüller
It took a while for Hollywood to take notice of German actor Sandra Hüller, who had been winning multiple awards in Europe before she led breakout thriller Anatomy of a Fall in her mid-40s. The film went from a Palme d’Or win to Oscar recognition with five nominations, including best actress for Hüller (it ultimately won for original screenplay). At the same time, Hüller also appeared in Jonathan Glazer’s similarly acclaimed holocaust drama The Zone of Interest, the film that beat Anatomy of a Fall to an international feature win. The inevitable rush of offers came and this month sees her capitalising on the most lucrative one, starring opposite Ryan Gosling in $200m sci-fi adventure Project Hail Mary. Oscar buzz from that film is unlikely but later this year she’ll be co-lead in the more awards-friendly cold war-set drama 1949, the new film from Paweł Pawlikowski, who the Academy has previously shown love for, awarding Ida an Oscar and nominating him for Cold War. She also has a supporting role in Alejandro González Iñárritu’s much-anticipated Tom Cruise-led black comedy Digger that will probably be positioned as an awards play later this year.
Charles Melton
It had briefly seemed as if Charles Melton was set to pave the unlikely path from Glee to Riverdale to the Oscars back in 2024. The high school heartthrob turned serious actor had seemed like a shoo-in for a supporting actor nod for his best in show performance in Todd Haynes’s slippery drama May December but it wasn’t to be, critics circle acclaim failing to persuade the Academy. This year sees him in two festival-primed follow-up projects: Nicholas Winding Refn’s thriller Her Private Hell, likely to be at Cannes, and then Saturn Returns from Sing Sing/Train Dreams duo Greg Kwedar and Clint Bentley, which could land at a fall fest. While the Refn is less Oscar-friendly, the latter could spark their attention, the pair’s last two films amassing seven nominations between them. It’s a sweeping romantic drama that follows college sweethearts as they transition into adulthood over a decade and boasts Netflix and Brad Pitt’s Plan B behind the scenes, both companies more than familiar with guiding an actor to awards glory.
Ryusuke Hamaguchi
While Sunday didn’t bring the international wins some had hoped for, there were enough major nominations for films like Sentimental Value and The Secret Agent to show that the new, diversified Academy is continuing to look outside of the English language for contenders. Back in 2022, Drive My Car became the first ever Japanese film to score a best picture nom while also winning for international feature and giving writer-director Ryusuke Hamaguchi two further noms for screenplay and director. His new film, which is hotly tipped to premiere at Cannes, is a mix of French and Japanese and concerns the relationship between the director of a nursing home and a terminally ill playwright. It’s set to be an emotional drama (Hamaguchi was inspired by a real-life dynamic which “deeply moved” him) and it has Neon behind it, the same company that led Parasite and Anora to Oscars glory, the stars seeming to align for an Academy-favoured foreign pick.
Ruth Madeley
While 2021’s Coda might have quickly become one of the more forgettable best picture winners of the last decade, writer-director Sian Heder’s gentle drama about a deaf family and their hearing daughter did at least offer up a different kind of representation on the Oscar stage. She’s hoping to do the same again with Being Heumann, a drama based on pioneering disability rights activist Judith Heumann reuniting her with Apple. Her life is ripe for the biopic treatment, if treated as more than a Wikipedia summary, and Heder has cast Ruth Madeley in the lead, a British actor who has made strides as one of the most prominent wheelchair-using stars on TV with roles in Doctor Who and Years and Years. With support from Oscar nominee Mark Ruffalo and man-of-the-moment Dylan O’Brien, this feels primed for Oscar consideration, and if Madeley is nominated, she would be making history.
Sebastian Stan
Now mostly freed from the MCU shackles (with Thunderbolts underperforming, this year’s Avengers film could be his last outing as Bucky), it’s time for Sebastian Stan to fully transition into the real human world. Last year he scored his first Golden Globe for A Different Man and first Oscar nomination for The Apprentice, and this summer could see him back at Cannes with Cristian Mungiu’s hotly anticipated drama Fjord. Mungiu might have been cruelly snubbed by the Academy for his Palme d’Or-winning magnum opus 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days, but partnering with Stan and this year’s best actress nominee Renate Reinsve for a film that marks his first semi-English language project (with Romanian and Norwegian alongside) sounds like a safer bet, especially as the Academy now skews more international. The plot, about two families falling out after a devastating accusation of abuse, and Stan’s transformation, which from the first pic looks almost unrecognisable, also suggest potentially big things.
Octavia Spencer
Director Chinonye Chukwu has a brief history of directing women who were close to securing an Oscar nomination – Alfre Woodard for prison-set drama Clemency (she had Bafta, Gotham and Independent Spirit noms) and Danielle Deadwyler for Till (she had Bafta, Sag and Critics Choice noms as well as a Gotham win) – and her next project seems like it could finally edge her into the race. She’s bringing a new adaptation of Death of a Salesman to the screen with help from four-time Oscar nominee, and two-time Tony winner, Tony Kushner. It would be the first major big screen version since 1951, and Chukwu has recruited Oscar nominee Jeffrey Wright, Oscar winner Octavia Spencer, Tony nominee Corey Hawkins and Kelvin Harrison Jr. It’s a hell of a cast and any of them could be in the race, but the Academy loves Spencer (she was also nominated two times) and, if the film is ready in time for this season, one could see her potentially leading the best actress category.
Jack O’Connell
It’s been quite the comeback for Jack O’Connell, who had drifted somewhat since his initial breakout in the early 2010s. The past year has seen him leaning into his darker side with scene-stealing villain roles in 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple and Sinners, which meant he was part of the winning ensemble at this month’s Actor awards. Before he cashes a deserved cheque in Godzilla v Kong: Supernova, O’Connell will lead Danny Boyle’s adaptation of the Olivier and Tony-winning play Ink. He’s taking on the role of one-time tabloid editor Larry Lamb up against Guy Pearce’s Rupert Murdoch in a 60s-set Fleet Street drama that was adored onstage. The last time Boyle touched a fact-based workplace drama it was Steve Jobs, which brought nominations for Michael Fassbender and Kate Winslet, and recognition for O’Connell would be deserved after his recent boom.
Parker Posey
The journey wasn’t smooth or easy but Parker Posey, an actor long loved within the industry if not, unfairly, by many casting directors, has finally found herself bagging the sorts of roles she deserves. Small turns in Beau is Afraid, Thelma and Mrs and Mrs Smith led to her much-nominated performance in The White Lotus, which has now bagged her a role in Martin McDonagh’s latest, Wild Horse Nine. McDonagh’s last two films, Three Billboards and The Banshees of Inishirin, scored 17 Oscar noms between them and his latest is likely to follow a similar route later this year (Venice first, acclaim next, awards after). It’s the story of CIA agents in the 1970s and while Posey’s supporting role is as-yet-unclear she feels like a perfect match for McDonagh’s sweary, darkly funny dialogue.
Andrew Garfield
Andrew Garfield might have struggled to justify his last collaboration with Luca Guadagnino – the misbegotten campus thriller After the Hunt – but there’s enough to suggest his next one might be worth the effort. Garfield is playing OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in Artificial, a film about the behind-the-scenes drama that saw him fired and rehired within days back in 2023. It’s one of many AI projects in the works, most of which are thankfully taking a negative stance, and given how much bile was aimed at the tech at Sunday’s ceremony, this feels like one for voters to get behind. Garfield, who has two lead actor noms under his belt, is also leading up the new film from Paul Greengrass called The Uprising, which tells of the English peasants’ revolt of 1381. Greengrass is no sure thing at the Oscars given how action-heavy his films can be (his latest, wildfire thriller The Lost Bus, scored just one nod for visual effects) but given how much anger many currently have at the gap between rich and poor, this could feel timely enough to pierce through.
