Blockbusters, battles and Brits: Hollywood gears up for Oscar nominations
The Oscar nominations will be announced later, with Leonardo DiCaprio’s politically-charged thriller One Battle After Another expected to lead the field.
Vampire horror Sinners is also considered a strong contender, with actress Wunmi Mosaku one of the few British stars in with a chance of securing an acting nomination.
Irish actors Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal, meanwhile, are expected to be recognised for their roles in the screen adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s novel Hamnet.
Marty Supreme, Frankenstein, Sentimental Value, Bugonia and The Secret Agent are also predicted to feature heavily when the nominees are announced from 13:30 GMT.
US comedian Conan O’Brien will return to host this year’s Academy Awards ceremony, which takes place on 15 March.
Here’s everything you need to know ahead of the Oscar nominations.
A softer year for blockbusters
Two of the biggest films at the box office last year were Wicked: For Good and Avatar: Fire and Ash, but it looks as if both sequels will pick up fewer nominations than their predecessors.
Wicked’s second instalment was far less well received than the first film, while the third Avatar movie could get less traction due to fatigue with the franchise and director James Cameron’s nonchalant approach to Oscar campaigning.
“You can play the awards game, or you can play the game I like to play and that’s to make movies people actually go to,” Cameron said last month. “Sorry!”
If best picture nominations for these two blockbusters are unlikely, we’re certainly not feeling hopeful for A Minecraft Movie.
Will any Brits be nominated?
It’s a decidedly weaker year for British talent. Only two of the 36 actors nominated in the film categories at the Golden Globes were from the UK.
They were Cynthia Erivo (Wicked: For Good ) and Emily Blunt (The Smashing Machine). But neither of them is expected to get in at the Oscars.
Instead, the UK’s best hope might be Wunmi Mosaku (Sinners), who scored a supporting actress nomination at the Actor Awards (formerly SAG) and also made the Bafta longlist.
However, if all the UK stars miss out, this will be the first year since 1986 without any Brits nominated in the acting categories.
It’s a stronger year for Irish talent, thanks in large part to Hamnet, with Jessie Buckley the favourite to win best actress and Paul Mescal likely to get a nomination for supporting actor.
Leonardo DiCaprio goes into battle
Director Paul Thomas Anderson, affectionately known as PTA, has never won an Oscar, despite 11 career nominations for films such as Phantom Thread, Licorice Pizza and There Will Be Blood.
But he will almost certainly go from bridesmaid to bride this year, as his latest film One Battle After Another is steamrolling its way through awards season and could personally score him Oscars as the film’s writer, director and producer.
The movie, which struggled to break even despite rave reviews, follows a former revolutionary who reunites with his old crew to try to get his daughter back after her kidnap by a white supremacist group.
It’s likely to lead the field partly because of the sheer number of actors from the film in contention – a whopping 25% of the available acting nomination slots could go to Leonardo DiCaprio, Teyana Taylor, Chase Infiniti, Sean Penn and Benicio Del Toro.
Box office titans
This year’s best actor race is particularly heavy on big names – with DiCaprio facing competition from frontrunner Timothée Chalamet (Marty Supreme), Michael B Jordan (Sinners), Ethan Hawke (Blue Moon) and Jesse Plemons (Bugonia).
However, in a year that was packed with films starring Hollywood A-listers, several of them are likely to miss out on Oscar nominations.
Julia Roberts (After The Hunt), George Clooney (Jay Kelly), Dwayne Johnson (The Smashing Machine), Jennifer Lawrence (Die My Love) and Sydney Sweeney (Christy) all had movies in this year’s race, but lost momentum in recent weeks.
First-time nominees
Many of the actors that could receive their first Oscar nominations on Thursday are still at a relatively early stage of their careers – such as Chase Infiniti (25), Elle Fanning (27) and Jacob Elordi (28).
But there are plenty of other more established actors in the frame who astonishingly have never been nominated before – such as Rose Byrne (46), Wagner Moura (49), Joel Edgerton (51) and Stellan Skarsgård (74).
Perhaps most notably, Hollywood giant Adam Sandler (59) could be recognised for his role in Jay Kelly, having never previously been nominated by the Academy.
Sandler was one of the biggest box office stars of his generation, but his films were generally much more likely to win Razzie Awards (he has nine) than Oscars. An Academy nod would reflect his successful late-career reinvention.
Oscar comebacks
Horror film Weapons might not be traditional Oscars bait, but Amy Madigan could could get into the best supporting actress category for her role as an eccentric aunt who arrives in a US town shortly before the local schoolchildren go missing.
It’s been 40 years since the 75-year-old’s first (and last) Academy nomination, for the aptly named Twice in a Lifetime.
Elsewhere, Kate Hudson could be nominated for Song Sung Blue, which would be her first nomination since she was recognised 25 years ago for Almost Famous, while a nod for Benicio del Toro would be his first for 22 years.
A new casting category
The choice and combination of actors can make or break a film, and this year the Academy is introducing a new category for best casting. Expect many of the best picture frontrunners to also show up here.
From 2028, there’ll be yet another new category, when the Oscars will follow the Actor Awards (formerly SAG) in recognising best stunt design.
But how will they make room for these new categories given the ceremony already runs late every year?
That’ll become less of an issue when the Oscars moves to YouTube in 2029, without the tight time restrictions and commercial breaks that come with terrestrial television.
KPop Demon Hunters go for gold
One of the biggest hits of last year was Netflix’s KPop Demon Hunters, an animated film about a girlband who fight demons in their spare time.
It is the frontrunner in the best animated feature category – even the $1bn-grossing Zootopia 2 (known as Zootropolis 2 in the UK) is considered slayed.
KPop Demon Hunters is also likely to win best original song, with earworm Golden, one of the biggest hits of last year, well ahead of rivals.
New rule: Voters have to actually watch the films
Groundbreaking, right?
Those of us who watch all the major films in contention every year sometimes get a teeny tiny bit cross that not all of the people who actually vote do the same.
The Academy is trying to change that this year – members will have to either watch the films on the organisation’s streaming service, or fill in a form with the details of a cinema screening they attended.
It’ll be interesting to see whether this is actually enforced as we struggle to imagine Meryl Streep bothering with that level of admin.
How to watch the Oscar nominations
The nominations will be announced by The Color Purple’s Danielle Brooks, a former nominee herself, and Thunderbolts and Top Gun: Maverick star Lewis Pullman.
The Academy will be streaming the nominations on its official website, as well as its YouTube, Instagram, TikTok and Facebook channels.
They will also be streamed on the BBC News website, which will be running a live page as the announcement is taking place.
The nominations will be announced over about 20 minutes from 13:30 GMT, with a gap in the middle to allow US network ABC to take a commercial break.
