This year’s Best Picture Oscar race is unlike any before, and that’s kind of exciting. The dearth of blockbusters plus the eligibility of all streaming titles has, in a way, opened the floodgates this Oscar season for a number of different kinds of films to break into the awards race. Major titles from auteurs like Steven Spielberg and Wes Anderson were pushed to 2021, making more room for not just smaller but more intimate stories – told by burgeoning filmmakers – to shine in the spotlight.
There's certainly reflected in this year's eight Best Picture nominees, which are almost all small-scale, character-centric pieces. The two "biggest" movies from a pure budget perspective are Mank and The Trial of the Chicago 7, and even then those are dramas and not spectacle films.
A couple of major things are different about the 2021 Oscars in the wake of the pandemic. For one, films released in 2020 were eligible regardless of whether they received a theatrical release or not, because major theaters were closed for much of the year. Additionally, the deadline to have your film released and still be eligible for the Oscars was extended from December 31st to February 28, 2021, which is how Judas and the Black Messiah scored a nomination despite being released in January.
So where do things stand now that all the Best Picture nominees are in place? Who is our frontrunner, and is there a possibility of a dark horse contender or will Nomadland run the table? Let's dig into my full Best Picture predictions ahead of the Oscars ceremony on April 25th.
The Nominees, Ranked from Most Likely to Win to Least Likely to Win
Nomadland
The Trial of the Chicago 7
Promising Young Woman
The Father
Sound of Metal
Minari
Judas and the Black Messiah
Mank
The frontrunner at the moment for Best Picture, as has been true ever since it made a splash a the Toronto International Film Festival last fall, is Searchlight Pictures’ Nomadland. Director Chloe Zhao’s deeply humanist portrait of a woman (an Oscar-worthy Frances McDormand) living life on the road revels in the little things, bringing a striking empathy to people that society too often tosses aside or ignores altogether. It’s a stunning piece of naturalistic filmmaking but it never meanders or loses its thematic thread, and given Searchlight’s success in this category in years past, Nomadland has a very good shot at going all the way.
Statistics are on its side as well. The film earned six Oscar nominations in total, including Best Director, Actress, Adapted Screenplay, and Film Editing all of which are major categories for eventual Best Picture winners. Moreover, Nomadland just won the top PGA prize, which historically is a fairly good indicator of what will win Best Picture at the Oscars.
In truth, the biggest surprise this year would be if Nomadland did not win Best Picture. There's a sense of inevitability to its win, but especially in such a weird year, it's hard to tell if that consensus is real or something we've all just decided on.
If for some reason Nomadland doesn't win, the next contender in line appears to be Netflix's Trial of the Chicago 7. Writer/director Aaron Sorkin's courtroom drama is a story about the power of protest, and speaks to the world we're living in right now. It's also packed with excellent performances and crackerjack dialogue courtesy of Sorkin, and it's the kind of contender that likely speaks directly to the older, more traditional voters inside the Academy (even if the film itself is honestly pretty progressive).
In many ways the choice between Nomadland and Trial of the Chicago 7 is a battle between two different sides of the Oscars. There's the Oscars that chooses films like Moonlight and Parasite for Best Picture — that's the Nomadland choice — and there's the Oscars that chooses The Shape of Water or The King's Speech, which fall into more "traditional" Best Picture-winner trappings in terms of narrative construction and filmmaking. But right now, the wind is blowing more heavily towards the direction of the indie spirit that makes Nomadland such an emotional viewing experience.
Outside those two, Promising Young Woman has come on very strong in the last couple of months, earning a Best Director nomination for Emerald Fennell on top of nods for Actress, Original Screenplay, and Film Editing. That'd be a surprise worth tuning in for, and isn't entirely out of the question as Carey Mulligan has surged to the top of the Best Actress pack over the last few weeks.
The Father was a bit of a surprise Best Picture nominee given that it didn't earn a PGA nomination, but the Academy very heavily went for the Sony Pictures Classics drama about a father (Anthony Hopkins) suffering from dementia. The film even picked up a Best Film Editing nomination, which is evidence it's widely loved in various branches throughout the Academy.
A24's Minari is certainly one of the best reviewed films of the year, and had a strong showing overall at the Oscars with nominations for Director, Actor, and Original Screenplay, but its campaign is a bit more subdued than others at the moment.
Amazon's excellent indie Sound of Metal is a solid contender but a long shot for a Best Picture win. Ditto Mank, which at one point in time seemed like a heavy hitter, but David Fincher's black-and-white drama has proven to be a bit divisive, and the lack of nominations for Original Screenplay and Film Editing are telling.
And finally there's Judas and the Black Messiah, Warner Bros.' late-entry into the race that picked up a Best Picture nomination over other would-be contenders like Ma Rainey's Black Bottom and One Night in Miami. The Fred Hampton story is boldly told, and is likely to earn a win in Best Supporting Actor, but that's likely as far as it'll go.
There's still about a month to go before the ceremony, and many questions abound. Will anyone watch the telecast? Has the lack of a robust fall festival season colored our perception of the frontrunners? Will Nomadland just run the table? I'll check back in here in a few weeks, and we'll get a clearer picture of what to expect once the DGA and SAG awards weigh in with their picks, but right now I don't foresee the Best Picture race shifting all that much in this final stretch.