Oscar Seasoning: A Way Too Early Look at Films to Expect in the 2026 Awards Race

Yes, it’s too early but Oscar season never sleeps so neither do I.

The 2024 awards season came to an end in a pretty satisfactory manner. Anora, an indie film that pretty much everyone liked, won a ton of awards. A rising star was crowned Best Actress. Adrien Brody’s speech is still ongoing. Kieran Culkin’s wife shall keep pushing him into winning every award on the planet with the promise of a third child. Demi Moore didn’t win but got the comeback of her dreams. And we never again have to see, hear, or think about Emilia Perez. It could have been a hell of a lot worse.

And yes, we’re already thinking about next year. Awards campaigning takes up 365 days of any given year and we’re already seeing narratives forming. The Sundance Film Festival has introduced some very early frontrunners to the race and Cannes is around the corner. As I’ve talked about before on this here newsletter, the Oscars are seldom truly surprising, but they do throw us some fun curveballs now and then. Who, this time last year, would have thought that a hyper-bloody body horror satire starring Demi Moore would be a major contender? We’re not in a time of “anything goes” but we’re certainly more open to oddities and the un-mainstream.

The diversification of the Academy has led to some changes in terms of what is nominated. The voter base is now more international than ever, and I think that’s what a huge impact. Look at films like Flow or No Other Land, the latter of which doesn’t even have a US distributor. They won, in my opinion, because those non-US voters came out in droves and pushed the needle away from the centre. That makes the 2025 race exciting to me. Most of the stuff I’m interested in outside of awards contenders is not American and not “Oscar friendly” but does that mean they could still be players? Why not?

None of these predictions are anything you should bet your house on. I got way more things right last year than wrong but then I thought Joker: Folie a Deux would be a guaranteed nominee. Bless my heart (in fairness, so did most of us until we saw it – and I don’t even hate the film!) Think of this piece more as an indicator of how these narratives take form months before anyone sees a second of footage. Hey, I was right about some stuff!

If I Had Legs I’d Kick You

(Image via IMDb.)

Straight out of Sundance, this was the film that instantly picked up that awards buzz. It’s directed by Mary Bronstein, a filmmaker who is part of that mumblecore-adjacent Safdies-headed New York indie film scene (her husband Ronald is a regular collaborator of both Benny and Josh.) It did gangbusters at Sundance, then headed to Berlin where it picked up the Best Leading Performance trophy for Rose Byrne. She plays a woman whose life begins to crumble when her husband disappears, her child's illness worsens, and her relationship with her therapist grows hostile. Byrne is one of those endlessly reliable and loveable actresses who is primed for an Oscars moment (justice for Spy.)

But the thing that interests me most? Seeing Conan O’Brien in a serious role. He’s one of the great TV hosts and comedians of his generation and he’s been in a few films but never anything remotely dramatic, as far as I’m aware. What a fascinating choice for him to make at this point in his career. Comedians going serious is a tried and true tactic for awards bait but this just feels different to me somehow.

Die, My Love

(Image via IMDb.)

One of my all-time favourite filmmakers is Lynne Ramsay. She’s only made four features but they range in quality from great to masterpiece. The Oscars aren’t cool enough to pay attention to her (she should have won everything for You Were Never Really Here) but her new film might change that. Martin Scorsese is the executive producer and its cast includes Jennifer Lawrence, Sissy Spacek, Nick Nolte, Lakeith Stanfield, and Robert Pattinson. Die, My Love is described as a pitch-black comedy drama about a woman dealing with postpartum depression. Ramsay is one of her generation’s finest directors of trauma and its reverberations, so she seems ideal for this material. Expect this one to premiere at Cannes.

The Smashing Machine

(Image via IMDb.)

The Safdie brothers are no more. Now, they are solo directors with their own ideas and awards-y movies in play this year. Benny is in charge of The Smashing Machine, a biopic about the former boxer and MMA fighter Mark Kerr. The Oscars do love a boxing movie. The role of Mark Kerr is being played by none other than Dwayne Johnson. That's right: The Rock wants his Oscar.

Dwayne Johnson is a ruthlessly efficient and ambitious megastar who would commit to an awards run with the force of a military campaign. He’s made a lot of people a lot of money and the “action star to serious artiste” pipeline has yielded mighty results. Imagine him doing the roundtables and glossy magazine profiles where he talks about his process, research, and experience with those prosthetics. This dude wants it, and I’m probably more interested in that side of things than I am the film itself. Trust me: Dwayne is going to make Eddie Redmayne and Bradley Cooper look like anti-Academy protestors with his hustle.

Marty Supreme

And in the other corner we have the other Safdie. Josh is also directing a biopic but this one is about a table tennis player. This one is co-written by Ronald Bronstein (a busy year for him) and features Timothée Chalamet as Marty Mauser. Early reports suggest this film won't be a rigorously faithful biopic. Its fascinating cast includes Gwyneth Paltrow (returning to acting in a non-Pepper Potts role for the first time in years), Penn Jillette, Fran Drescher, and Tyler the Creator.

As evidenced by that surprise SAG Award win, the industry loves Timmy. He’s often seen as the only straight white guy in his age gap with serious power player potential (which speaks more to the limiting views of the business than Chalamet himself), and he’s savvy with his project choices. He’s a two-time Best Actor nominee before the age of 30 and directors cannot speak highly enough of his commitment. He’s going to get his moment, and I think it’ll happen sooner rather than later. Most men have to get into their craggy-faced 40s before the Academy takes them seriously, but Timmy mania is a thing, people are rooting for him.

Frankenstein

(Image via Netflix.)

I’m always seated early for my boy Guillermo del Toro. You could make the case that many of his films are already Frankenstein adaptations but it’s surprising it’s taken him this long to just adapt Mary Shelley’s novel. And what a cast he’s put together for his reimagining of one of the true classics of horror: Oscar Isaac, Christoph Waltz, Mia Goth, Jacob Elordi (is he talented or just tall? Discuss), Lars Mikkelsen, Charles Dance, and Ralph Ineson. Said del Toro to Empire: "The best moments in my mind of Frankenstein, of the novel, are yet to be filmed [...] The only guy that has ever nailed for me the emptiness, not the tragic, not the Miltonian dimension of the monster, but the emptiness is Christopher Lee in the Hammer films, where he really looks like something obscenely alive." This man is a horror scholar so I trust him to really delve into this material. Plus, a ton of it was filmed in Scotland. Yay!

I also have to give a shout-out to another Frankenstein movie of 2025: Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Bride! (the exclamation mark is part of the title.) Early buzz is that it’s very expensive, very niche, and very punk rock but also hot as hell. Please, I can only be so seated this early in the year, Maggie! She’s my favourite Gyllenhaal (Secretary nerds, rise up!)

Is This Thing On?

(Image via YouTube // CityTV.)

Bless Bradley Cooper. He wants it bad. Look, I love this man’s transparent thirst. He’s ambitious, eager to please, beloved by everyone, and has Quinta Brunson’s seal of approval. But no Oscar wins, despite multiple nominations across several categories. There’s this idea of him being pretentious or his reach exceeding his grasp, which I don’t necessarily agree with. But I also think that his past directorial works, A Star is Born and Maestro, revealed how much his creative ambitions were stifled by rote and middlebrow notions of what would best appeal to his contemporaries. I want him to loosen up and explore stories beyond what he feels will win him an Oscar. I also think he’s more likely to make a bona fide masterpiece with a film where he isn’t writing, directing, and leading it.

So, I am intrigued by his third film, Is This Thing On? Yes, he's in it but as a supporting player because the real star here is Will Arnett, who is also co-writing the film. This one is about a man finding himself through stand-up after the end of his marriage. It sounds like it could be a less caustic but no less melancholy BoJack Horseman, and since that show is Arnett's greatest work, how can I not be up for this? Come on Brad, I know you can do it!

Hamnet

(Image via Wikimedia Commons.)

Chloe Zhao followed up her Best Director Oscar win for Nomadland (only the second-ever woman to do so) with a Marvel movie. It made sense on paper but the MCU now seems determined to pretend that Eternals never happened. Now, she’s going back to her indie roots but with an adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s critically adored book. The Hamnet of the title was the son of William Shakespeare, who died tragically young. The novel is a startlingly good meditation on grief and creativity, and the ways they often intertwine, and it has a lot of those pensive, internal moments that Zhao favours as a storyteller. Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley are in the leads as Shakespeare and his wife Anne Hathaway, Joe Alwyn is also on board, which will make for a nice double bill for him in 2025 since he's also playing Laertes in a new version of Hamlet.

Rosemead

(Image via Neon.)

I love Lucy Liu. I wrote recently about how I’m eager to see her get her dues with meatier roles and directors who understand her. She’s a stalwart of film and TV who has worked consistently and reliably for decades but she’s well overdue a role that gives her something of substance and thought to do. Several years ago, she optioned a story in the Los Angeles Times about a terminally ill mother struggling to help her mentally ill son as he sinks further into an obsession with mass shootings. It seemed like it might be yet another project that just never got off the ground but it did. Liu fought hard for it. So hell yes, bring on Rosemead. Lucy, do you need an Oscar campaign manager?

Michael

Oh man, this movie. Honestly, it makes me feel dirty. A Michael Jackson biopic was always going to be messy, but one endorsed by the family with his own nephew playing the title role? And with all this drama around the portrayal of the accusations of child sexual assault that apparently completely propagandizes Jackson? Nope. No thank you.

But also, I 100% believe this film is going to be Bohemian Rhapsody big, and that means it will inevitably be considered for awards. If it’s a commercial hit then that’s all the Academy will care about. And it’s a film full of beloved actors, including Colman Domingo, who has two acting nominations in two years to his name (also oh wow talk about romanticizing the story by having Joe f*cking Jackson played by someone that hot and charismatic.)

The only way this film flops is if it simply doesn’t get released. I have absolutely no hope in humanity when it comes to this.

Sentimental Value

(Image via IMDb.)

Joachim Trier might be the most prominent Norwegian director working today. His last film, The Worst Person in the World, was a critical darling that introduced the English-speaking world to Renate Reinsve. Now, the pair are reuniting for Sentimental Value, a comedy-drama that also stars Elle Fanning and Stellan Skarsgård. This is a family story about two women mourning the loss of their father and the unexpected return of their father, a filmmaker who wants one of his kids to star in a movie he's written. Non-English movies are no longer seen as instant write-offs for awards season. Sure, we may only get one or two breakouts a year but that’s still an improvement. How exciting that things like Parasite, I’m Still Here, The Zone of Interest, The Worst Person in the World, and so many others are even part of the conversation from the get-go. Plus, I’ll watch Reinsve in anything. She’s so effing good in A Different Man.

Highest 2 Lowest

Spike Lee is indisputably one of the most important filmmakers of the past 40 years, and the Academy has treated him rather shoddily. Racism will do that, I suppose. While he’s finally a competitive Oscar winner thanks to BlaKKKlansman, it still feels like he hasn’t entirely gotten his dues. Da 5 Bloods was entirely snubbed by them and I’m still mad about it (justice for Delroy Lindo.) Will the Oscars pay more attention to him this year now that he’s reuniting with Denzel Washington? And on a remake of an Akira Kurosawa movie?

High and Low (which was adapted loosely from an Evan Hunter novel) was about a Japanese businessman whose plans for a buyout are thwarted when kidnappers mistakenly kidnap his chauffeur's son to ransom him for 30 million yen. Lee is great at classic thrillers, as Inside Man proved. He’s also a filmmaker with so many ideas and themes and concerns going on at once. One of the reasons I find his films to be so exciting to watch, even the not-good ones, is because he always has so much he wants to say and do. Imagine him taking on Kurosawa but in the modern day and with all these themes of capitalism, exploitation, class, greed, and so on.

Also, this is apparently the year of A$AP Rocky, serious thespian, thanks to this and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You. Add that to the list of “things we got before another Rihanna album.”

Ice Spice is in this one too. Okay?

Honourable mentions

(Image via Netflix.)

There are so many other movies I’m eager to see or find out how their presence in the awards story unfolds. There’s Eddington, the new black comedy from Ari Aster starring Emma Stone, Joaquin Phoenix, Austin Butler, and Pedro Pascal. Speaking of Stone, she has a new film with her most frequent collaborator, Yorgos Lanthimos. Bugonia is a remake of a Korean film called Save the Green Planet!, about two conspiracy theorists who kidnap a pharmaceutical CEO because they think she's an alien. Mona Fastvold, the writer of The Brutalist, is behind the director's chair for Ann Lee, a bananas-sounding historical drama musical about the founder of the Shakers. Her husband Brady Corbet is co-writing.

Matthew McConaughey is back with The Lost Bus, a drama about a bus driver navigating a bus full of kids through the 2018 Camp Fire. Paul Greengrass is directing that one with Blumhouse producing (?) Luca Guadagnino may have gone zero for two this season with the great Challengers and Queer (justice for both) but we still have After the Hunt in our sights as a contender. Julia Roberts plays a college professor stuck in a professional and personal quandary when a colleague is accused of something shocking. Her illustrious co-stars include Andrew Garfield, Ayo Edebiri, and Michael Stuhlbarg. And yes, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross are doing the music.

Wicked: For Good will not be ignored. I’m holding space for The History of Sound, a historical romantic drama with Paul Mescal and Josh O'Connor. Benoit Blanc is back for a third Knives Out movie, Wake Up Dead Man. Another TV star who could make the jump to film with a splash is Jeremy Allan White, starring as Bruce f*cking Springsteen in Deliver Me From Nowhere. I was less hot on Licorice Pizza than some fellow PTA nerds but of course One Battle After Another is on my radar. Little is known about it but rumours suggest it's a $130m chase comedy with Pynchon inspirations, and its cast includes Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn (ugh), and Regina Hall, an actress well overdue her Oscar moment. Edward Berger is now a hot-shot Oscar figure thanks to All Quiet on the Western Front and Conclave. Up next for him is The Ballad of a Small Player, a Lawrence Osborne adaptation about a gambler and a con artist played by Colin Farrell and Tilda Swinton.

I’ve cooled my jets on Taika Waititi after the mess that was Next Goal Wins. I feel like he needs to pull back on all of his Taika-isms and focus on the material over his own shtick. I’m not exactly optimistic about him adapting Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun, a delicate sci-fi about a solar-powered robot who is the companion of a sick child. But I’d like to be proven wrong (and I need Amy Adams to win that Oscar already.) I’m always up for more Wes Anderson so I am seated for The Phoenician Scheme. Anne Hathaway and Michaela Cole are sure to inspire some “Yas mother” standom with Mother Mary, directed by David Lowery. No title for this one yet but Trey Parker and Matt Stone + Kendrick Lamar? What the hell does that look like? We’ll find out soon enough.

My least anticipated movie? F1. Don’t care about cars and f*ck Brad Pitt. Hope it flops.