Finally, the nominations are here. Deferred as of January 17 due to the wildfires in Los Angeles, the announcement of this year’s crop of Oscar nominees will take place on Thursday at 5:30 PT/8:30 ET. Rachel Sennott and Bowen Yang will reveal the nominations live from the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theatre; the message will be streamed on Oscar.com, Oscars.org and the Academy’s digital platforms (TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook).
The 97th Academy Awards will be held on Sunday, March 2. Hosted by Conan O’Brien.
As Steve Pond noted in his final Oscars predictionshas this year’s awards season produced one of the most wide-open races in years: “The Academy is much larger than it was a decade ago, with 9,905 voting members as of December, and it is much more international. And while the majority of members are still based in Los Angeles, how many of them made the effort to watch the movies and vote for a month when the city was in flames?”
Which isn’t to say there aren’t some safe bets: “Anora,” “The Brutalist,” “A Complete Unknown,” “Conclave,” “Emilia Pérez” and “Wicked” are all likely to land Best Picture nominations ; Adrien Brody (“The Brutalist”), Timothée Chalamet (“A Complete Unknown”), Colman Domingo (“Sing Sing”) and Ralph Fiennes (“Conclave”) are poised to hit the Best Actor list; and Best Supporting Actor front-runner Kieran Culkin (“A Real Pain”) will likely be joined by Edward Norton (“A Complete Unknown”) and Yura Borisov (“Anora”).
Best Female Female, on the other hand, is a much harder group to predict. The most competitive of this year’s acting categories, Best Actress will whittle down as many as eight very strong contenders to five, perhaps with Cynthia Erivo (“Wicked”), Marianne Jean-Baptiste (“Hard Truths”), Mikey Madison (“Anora” ) ”), Demi Moore (“The Substance”) and Karla Sofía Gascón (“Emilia Pérez”). But Fernanda Torres won a Golden Globe earlier this month for her amazing performance in “I’m Still Here,” so we can’t rule her out. The Academy could also decide to award Angelina Jolie (“Maria”) or Nicole Kidman (“Babygirl”) – or throw a real curveball and nominate Pamela Anderson for “The Last Showgirl.”
We will update the list of winners live, so stay tuned.
