Stars gather for Oscars after huge year for cinema

The biggest night in the entertainment calendar is finally upon us – the 96th Oscars.

Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, which has 13 nominations, is expected to sweep up at the ceremony later.

Many film fans will also be cheering on Barbie, last year’s biggest hit at the box office, which has eight nods.

US television host Jimmy Kimmel will be presenting the awards from Los Angeles, with the show starting at 16:00 (PT), 19:00 (ET) and midnight (GMT).

Here are all the hot talking points and things to look out for at the ceremony (we’ve already placed a bet on Margot Robbie wearing pink).

More formally known as the Academy Awards, the Oscars have been recognising big screen talent since 1929.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, based in Los Angeles, annually nominate and vote across more than 20 categories including best picture, best actor and best actress.

While film awards ceremonies including the Golden Globes and the Baftas attract plenty of attention, the Oscars is the pinnacle of achievement in the awards season calendar. The awards are voted for by Academy members.

Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, about the life of the man who helped develop the atomic bomb, is leading the charge with 13 nominations including best picture, best actor (Cillian Murphy) and best supporting actress (Emily Blunt).

Titanic, Ben Hur and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King jointly hold the record for the most wins with 11, so could Oppenheimer match it or even do better?

Its British-born filmmaker Nolan is the hot favourite to pick up best director. While his films have collected Oscars previously, the man behind movies including Interstellar, Inception and The Dark Knight Rises has never won this prestigious category.

In fact, despite his pedigree, he’s only been nominated for best director once previously (Dunkirk in 2018). This is surely his year.

Four out of five nominated directors this year are European (Nolan has dual US/British citizenship but he was born and grew up here so we’re claiming him).

If, as widely expected, Oppenheimer’s Robert Downey Jr picks up the award for best supporting actor, it will also be a first Oscar win for him.

Chasing down Oppenheimer with 11 nods is Yorgos Lanthimos’s brilliantly bizarre Poor Things. Its star, Emma Stone, is a frontrunner in the best actress race alongside Lily Gladstone from Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon. If Gladstone triumphs – and it’s hard to call at this point – she will be the first Native American to win the award.

Killers of the Flower Moon, about the murder of members of the Osage Indian tribe by white settlers who are after their oil, scored 10 nominations in total.

Scorsese has now been nominated for a best director Oscar 10 times, which makes him the most nominated living director in Academy Awards history. He’s also the oldest best director nominee at 81.

His long-time collaborator Thelma Schoonmaker is the most nominated editor in history with nine nods, and this could be a record-breaking fourth win for her (she currently holds the joint record with three wins).

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock since Christmas (and we’ve all felt like doing it in this weather), Barbie director Greta Gerwig and the film’s star, Margot Robbie, missed out on individual nominations when they were announced in January.

Barbie did land eight nods in total though, with America Ferrara and Ryan Gosling recognised in the best supporting actress and supporting actor categories respectively. But it’s still not Kenough for some.

All the films above are up for the coveted best picture prize, and are joined by French courtroom drama Anatomy of a Fall, romantic drama Past Lives, Leonard Bernstein biopic Maestro, incisive satire American Fiction, warm comedy tale The Holdovers and chilling Nazi drama The Zone of Interest.

The Barbenheimer juggernaut that sparked a thousand memes has done the Oscars no harm this year; the commercial success of these two films which have put bums on seats and also won over the critics, may bring new audiences to this year’s event.

While some categories appear to have it all wrapped up – The Holdovers’ Da’Vine Joy Randolph and Oppenheimer’s Robert Downey Jr have picked up pretty much every film prize going in the run-up to the Oscars – there could still be some surprises in store.

The race for best actress between Stone and Gladstone is too close to call, but could Gladstone’s recent Screen Actors Guild (SAG) win get her over the line? That’s what happened with Michelle Yeoh last year.

However, Stone has the showier role as Poor Things’ charming protagonist Bella Baxter, while Gladstone’s dignified and resilient Molly Kyle in Flower Moon is a more understated part that enjoys considerably less screen time. It’s an intriguing contest.

Best actor is also up in the air with Paul Giamatti (The Holdovers) and Cillian Murphy (Oppenheimer) in a two-horse race, although Murphy seems to have his nose in front following recent wins at Bafta and SAG. If he wins, he will be the first Irish-born actor to triumph, although Daniel Day-Lewis, who holds both British and Irish citizenship, has won three best actor Oscars previously.

In best picture, could The Holdovers pull an Argo, winning best picture for a film in which the director (Alexander Payne) isn’t nominated for best director? It will take some doing to overhaul the Oppenheimer steamroller, but stranger things have happened.

Slightly in the realms of fantasy now, but if Rustin’s Colman Domingo also pulls off a big shock by winning the Oscar for best actor for playing gay Civil Rights activist Bayard Rustin, he will be the first Afro-Latino actor to win the prize. And there are people of colour in every acting category.

Jodie Foster was nominated for best supporting actress for her portrayal of the gay swimming coach Bonnie Stoll in Nyad. It’s the first time two gay actors have been nominated for playing two gay characters in the same year.

There’s progress elsewhere, too. But it’s slow progress. Anatomy of a Fall’s Justine Triet is only the eighth woman to be nominated for best director (the Oscars director branch is made of up 75% men). However a record three films directed by women – Triet, Gerwig and Celine Song (Past Lives) – are up for best picture (out of a possible 10).

Other categories are also worth paying attention to – the short film and short animation categories are buckling under the strain of stardust this year.

Both shortlists are worth checking out in their own right but some names you might recognise include Wes Anderson, who has directed The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, a Roald Dahl adaptation starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Ralph Fiennes and Dev Patel.

Meanwhile, David Olewoyo stars in Misan Harriman’s The After, which tackles grief.

And Robbie Robertson could pick up a posthumous Oscar for best score for Killers of the Flower Moon. He sadly died aged 80 in August last year.

Dave Mullins, who worked at Pixar for 20 years, wrote and directed animated short War is Over! Inspired by the Music of John & Yoko. The famous pair’s son, Sean Lennon, is the executive producer.

Anyone who is anyone will be there, is the short answer. Most of the nominees will be gracing the red carpet (we think it’s red anyway, last year they switched to a champagne colour but it got dirty very quickly).

Presenters include Zendaya, Al Pacino, Lupita Nyong’o, Bad Bunny, Dwayne Johson, Regina King, Matthew McConaughey, Mahershala Ali, Ke Huy Quan, Brendan Fraser and Michelle Pfeiffer.

Never mind the A-listers, we’re hoping Messi, the dog from Anatomy of a Fall, makes another star appearance.

The best song nominees will all perform, including Barbie’s Ryan Gosling and Mark Ronson with I’m Just Ken. Gosling gave a hilarious reaction to the song’s win at the Critics’ Choice Awards earlier this year – bemused and almost suspicious.

Billie Eilish will also sing her Barbie track, the favourite to win, What Was I Made For?

US late night presenter Jimmy Kimmel returns to hosting duties this year – it will be his fourth time, including his stint at the helm last year, which marked a smooth return after the chaos of 2022’s ceremony when Will Smith slapped one of the awards presenters, Chris Rock.

Kimmel joked when his return was announced: “I always dreamed of hosting the Oscars exactly four times.” We bet it’s not his last, though.

The 2024 Oscars will air live on Sunday 10 March from the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, where the ceremony has been held since 2002.

The show can be watched in the US on ABC and on various streaming services. It’s also broadcast around the world in more than 200 territories.

In the UK, you might actually be able to stay awake to watch this year. The awards start an hour earlier and the clocks in Los Angeles – PST – go forward an hour on Oscars Sunday. The show starts at 16:00 (PT), 19:00 (ET) and midnight (GMT). UK viewers can watch on ITV and ITVX from 22:30.

As well as Nolan, other Brits in the running include Emily Blunt (Oppenheimer), Carey Mulligan (Maestro), Jonathan Glazer (director, The Zone of Interest), Jacqueline Durran (costume design, Barbie) and Holly Waddington (costume design, Poor Things).

And what about this for an effort? Special effects whizz Neil Corbould (who already has two Oscars under his belt) is up for three this year in the visual effects category for The Creator, Napoleon and Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One.

Meanwhile, if Sandra Huller picks up best actress (Anatomy of a Fall) she will be the first German to do so in 60 years.

It’s also the first time two international films not in the English language have been nominated for best picture in the same year (Anatomy of a Fall and The Zone of Interest).

Read more about some of the films in this year’s Oscars race: