Uproxx’s Awards Forecast offers a weekly look at the front-runners in several key Academy Award races, based on pundit chatter and pre-Oscar awards. (The pundit analysis is based on opinions put forward by major Oscar-tracking outlets, including Vulture, Entertainment Weekly, the expert panel at Gold Derby, Indiewire, Awards Daily, The Hollywood Reporter, Variety, and Awards Circuit. Pre-Oscar awards consider recent winners announced by industry and critic organizations that annually recognize achievement in film.)
Because we at Uproxx believe strongly in Oscar-related service journalism, this week’s Awards Forecast will project the winners in all 24 of the categories that will be recognized during Sunday’s Academy Awards broadcast. Without further ado, here are two dozen educated statuette guesses.
Best Picture
Nominees:
The Big Short
Bridge of Spies
Brooklyn
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Martian
The Revenant
Room
Spotlight
Predicted Winner: This is the hardest-to-predict Best Picture race in at least the last decade. But here goes: Because the three major guilds gave their top prizes to different movies, it appears that the Oscar will go one of three ways. Many awards season scholars are taking the Producers Guild’s best picture choice, The Big Short, most seriously since the PGA has been the most reliable Best Picture indicator since preferential voting began in 2010. However, if you consider the award that has most accurately predicted the Best Picture winner for the greatest number of years, that would be the one given by the Directors Guild, in which case you’d have to go with The Revenant. And if you stick with the Screen Actors Guild Award winner for best ensemble, the early front-runner of the season and a movie that is likely to earn a large percentage of number two votes in addition to number ones — important, again, in that preferential voting system — you might conclude that Best Picture belongs to Spotlight.
I have concluded each of these things, then changed my mind, at least 10 times. But I’ve got to pick something, so I am going to go with The Revenant, because the DGA has a longer track record to go by; because The Revenant feels like it has more momentum behind it; because The Revenant has been a big critical and box office success whose bear fights and Leo liver feasts became part of the zeitgeist in a way that Spotlight and The Big Short did not; and because, when I imagine hearing The Revenant announced as the winner on Sunday night, it sounds so obvious that I’ll feel dumb if I don’t choose it.*
*But the truth is I really have no idea because Best Picture is crazy this year.
Best Director
Nominees:
Lenny Abrahamson, Room
Alejandro G. Inárritu, The Revenant
Tom McCarthy, Spotlight
Adam McKay, The Big Short
George Miller, Mad Max: Fury Road
Predicted Winner: Alejandro G. Inárritu. He won the top directing prize from the DGA, which also usually matches up with the Oscar winner in this category and has for the past nine out of 10 years.
Best Actor
Nominees:
Bryan Cranston, Trumbo
Matt Damon, The Martian
Leonardo DiCaprio, The Revenant
Michael Fassbender, Steve Jobs
Eddie Redmayne, The Danish Girl
George Miller, Mad Max: Fury Road
Predicted Winner: If it isn’t Leonardo DiCaprio, I will personally hunt down a bison and eat its raw liver. And just so you know: it’s really hard to find bison in my neighborhood.
Best Actress
Nominees:
Cate Blanchett, Carol
Brie Larson, Room
Jennifer Lawrence, Joy
Charlotte Rampling, 45 Years
Saoirse Ronan, Brooklyn
Predicted Winner: Brie Larson. She’s been the front-runner all season long, and has already won the Golden Globe, the Critics’ Choice Award, the SAG and the BAFTA. No one else has a chance.
Best Supporting Actor
Nominees:
Christian Bale, The Big Short
Tom Hardy, The Revenant
Mark Rylance, Bridge of Spies
Mark Ruffalo, Spotlight
Sylvester Stallone, Creed
Predicted Winner: Sylvester Stallone. A win for him is both a comeback and a throwback to the 1977 Oscars, when the first Rocky won Best Picture and Best Director. In addition to the fact that he’s quite good in Creed, that narrative should be tough for Academy voters to resist.
Best Supporting Actress
Nominees:
Jennifer Jason Leigh, The Hateful Eight
Rooney Mara, Carol
Rachel McAdams, Spotlight
Alicia Vikander, The Danish Girl
Kate Winslet, Steve Jobs
Predicted Winner: Alicia Vikander. This is the toughest acting category to call, but the fact that Vikander won the SAG and has been picked by most Oscar pundits to triumph over her closest competitor, Kate Winslet, makes her the safest bet.
Best Original Screenplay
Nominees:
Bridge of Spies
Ex Machina
Inside Out
Spotlight
Straight Outta Compton
Predicted Winner: Spotlight. It won the Writers’ Guild Award in this category and is overwhelmingly favored by professional Academy Award gurus.
Best Adapted Screenplay
Nominees:
The Big Short
Brooklyn
Carol
The Martian
Room
Predicted Winner: The Big Short. Same rules apply to this screenplay projection: it won the Writers’ Guild Award in this category and is overwhelmingly favored by professional Academy Award gurus.
Best Animated Feature
Nominees:
Anomalisa
Boy & The World
Inside Out
Shaun the Sheep Movie
When Marnie Was There
Predicted Winner: Inside Out. Your two surest things this Oscar season: the triumphs of DiCaprio and Bing-Bong.
Best Foreign Language Film
Nominees:
Embrace of the Serpent
Mustang
Son of Saul
Theeb
A War
Predicted Winner: Son of Saul. Very few prognosticators are expecting this to go any other way, so expect this Holocaust film, with its compelling camerawork, to carry the day.
Best Documentary
Nominees:
Amy
Cartel Land
The Look of Silence
What Happened, Miss Simone?
Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom
Predicted Winner: Amy. Music docs have done well in recent years (see 20 Feet From Stardom and Searching for Sugar Man) and Asif Kapadia’s intimate portrait of Amy Winehouse looks poised to continue the trend.
Best Cinematography
Nominees:
Carol
The Hateful Eight
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Revenant
Sicario
Predicted Winner: Emmanuel Lubezki for The Revenant. This, Lubezki’s second win in a row, is as done a deal as DiCaprio.
Best Film Editing
Nominees:
The Big Short
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Revenant
Spotlight
Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Predicted Winner: Margaret Sixel for Mad Max: Fury Road, for the reasons stated here.
Best Production Design
Nominees:
Bridge of Spies
The Danish Girl
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Martian
The Revenant
Predicted Winner: Colin Gibson and Lisa Thompson for the mind-blowing punk rock, post-apocalyptic look of Mad Max: Fury Road.
Best Costume Design
Nominees:
Carol
Cinderella
The Danish Girl
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Revenant
Predicted Winner: A number of people think this will go to Mad Max‘s Jenny Beavan, who won the BAFTA. Others point to Sandy Powell for either Cinderella or Carol. (Yes, she’s nominated twice.) Given Oscar’s history of favoring period pieces in this category, and the fact that this could be the film’s only Academy Award, I’m going with Carol.
Best Makeup and Hairstyling
Nominees:
The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Revenant
Predicted Winner: Conventional wisdom says this is going to Mad Max and I agree.
Best Score
Nominees:
Bridge of Spies
Carol
The Hateful Eight
Sicario
Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Predicted Winner: Spaghetti-Western legend Ennio Morricone — who has never won an Oscar for his individual work on a film — for The Hateful Eight.
Best Original Song
Nominees:
“Earned It” from Fifty Shades of Grey
“Manta Ray” from Raising Extinction
“Song No. 3” from Youth
“Til It Happens to You” from The Hunting Ground
“Writing’s on the Wall” from Spectre
Predicted Winner: Everyone seems to be calling this for “Til It Happens to You,” co-written by Lady Gaga and Dianne Warren. And since this is Warren’s eighth nomination with no wins to her credit, I’d say the woman’s due.
Best Visual Effects
Nominees:
Ex-Machina
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Martian
The Revenant
Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Predicted Winner: This is another one where the predictions have diverged and it’s easy to imagine Mad Max, The Revenant or Star Wars walking away with this. My inclination? The Revenant wins, because you can’t argue with a CGI bear and probably shouldn’t.
Best Sound Editing
Nominees:
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Martian
The Revenant
Sicario
Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Predicted Winner: Again, there’s a divide among forecasters between The Revenant and Mad Max. I’m going with The Revenant.
Best Sound Mix
Nominees:
Bridge of Spies
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Martian
The Revenant
Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Predicted Winner: At the risk of being redundant, this too will probably go to either The Revenant or Mad Max. So to mix things up, I’m boldly going with Mad Max: Fury Road in this category.
Best Documentary Short
Nominees:
“Body Team 12”
“Chau, Beyond the Lines”
“Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah”
“A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness”
“Last Day of Freedom”
Predicted Winner: A few outlets have predicted that “Body Team 12” or “A Girl in the River” will win, but I’m siding with The Hollywood Reporter and Variety, who think this Oscar will go to “Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah.” My rationale? It provides a glimpse at the filmmaking process behind a widely revered 1985 epic Holocaust documentary that was not nominated for an Academy Award; in some voters’ minds, an Oscar for the short may make-up for the lack of one for the original feature.
Best Live Action Short
Nominees:
“Ave Maria”
“Day One”
“Everything Will Be Okay”
“Shok”
“Stutterer”
Predicted Winner: “Shok.“ True confession: I’m not always great at predicting the short winners, and the predicterati seem torn between “Shok” and “Day One”. I’m going with “Shok,” but don’t be surprised if it’s “Day One” instead.
Best Animated Short
Nominees:
“Bear Story”
“Prologue”
“Sanjay’s Super Team”
“We Can’t Live Without Cosmos”
“World of Tomorrow”
Predicted Winner: This is a hard one, so hard that prognosticators are split and I have changed my pick three times while writing this piece alone. But I’m going with “Sanjay’s Super Team“ because, in a year criticized for its lack of cultural inclusiveness, Academy voters may want to celebrate a sweet little film about the bond forged between a traditional Indian father and his superhero-worshipping Indian-American son. Also, like recent winners “Feast” and “Paperman,” “Super Team” played in theaters before a wide release (Pixar’s The Good Dinosaur), which means it’s the one most Academy members will have seen.
