This article contains IndieWire’s preliminary Best Picture predictions for the 2024 Oscars. We regularly update our predictions throughout awards season, and republish previous versions (like this one) for readers to track how the Oscar race has changed. For the latest update on the frontrunners for the 96th Academy Awards, see our 2024 Oscars predictions hub.
Nominations voting is from January 11-16, 2024, with official Oscar nominations announced January 23, 2024. Final voting is February 22-27, 2024. And finally, the 96th Oscars telecast will be broadcast on Sunday, March 10 and air live on ABC at 8:00 p.m. ET/ 5:00 p.m. PT. We update predictions through awards season, so keep checking IndieWire for all our 2024 Oscar picks.
The State of the Race
Per usual, big-budget projects have the marketing and awareness advantage on the road to the Oscars. Look at two summer flicks, Christopher Nolan’s hard-hitting biopic “Oppenheimer,” (Universal), whose stars Cillian Murphy, Matt Damon, and Robert Downey, Jr. will chase Oscars, and Greta Gerwig’s pastel-pink Mattel extravaganza “Barbie” (Warner Bros.), starring likely acting contenders Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling. Both films have accrued critical raves and elevated coverage as their studios avoided selling the films (and turning off mainstream audiences) via festival cred.
Amazon and MGM will push SXSW opener and “Argo” Best Picture winner Ben Affleck’s well-received sports drama “Air,” even though it was far from a box-office success given its $90 million cost. But if the older male Academy demo loves a streaming movie looking for a marketing lift, does that matter?
Of course, many festival films will build enough prestige for the Oscar race. A24, which could have back-to-back Oscar-winners after “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” will push Sundance critical and box-office breakout “Past Lives,” from Korean-American playwright-turned-director Celine Song, about a married New York writer (Greta Lee) who reunites with her Korean childhood sweetheart (Teo Yoo). The film is going to pass $10 million at the domestic box office, a feat that is difficult to achieve these days.
It’s rare but possible for a first-time director’s film to win Best Picture: see stage-to-screen directors Delbert Mann (“Marty,” 1955) and Sam Mendes (“American Beauty,” 1999). “Terms of Endearment” (1983) director James L. Brooks came from television, and two movie-star rookie directors, Robert Redford (“Ordinary People,” 1980) and Kevin Costner (“Dances with Wolves” 1990), took home the Best Picture Oscar. Song is in the running.
Cannes propelled “The Departed” Oscar-winner Martin Scorsese into the race with his western epic “Killers of the Flower Moon” (AppleTV+/Paramount), starring Best Actor winners Leonardo DiCaprio (“The Revenant”), Robert De Niro (“The Godfather Part II” and “Raging Bull”), and rising breakout Lily Gladstone; and Todd Haynes, with fictionalized true story “May December” (Netflix) starring Oscar-winners Julianne Moore (“Alice”) and Natalie Portman (“Black Swan”), which opens the New York Film Festival on September 29. Cannes box-office specialty hit “Asteroid City” (Focus) proved to be Wes Anderson’s most entertaining film since “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” which earned nine nominations including Picture and Director and won four craft Oscars.
British auteur Jonathan Glazer won the grand prize for German-language “Zone of Interest” (A24), a dark holocaust movie starring German actress Sandra Hüller (Oscar-nominated international feature “Toni Erdmann”), who also scored raves for French director Justine Triet’s Palme d’Or winner, the courtroom drama “Anatomy of a Fall” (Neon), which is half English, half French. Will France submit the film? The U.K. would have to submit “Zone of Interest” for the International Feature Film Oscar. In any case, the increasingly international Academy voters could respond to both films, as they did with “All Quiet on the Western Front,” “The Worst Person in the World,” “Parasite,” and “Drive My Car.”
This season, the big question is how the ongoing WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes will impact high-profile films hoping to make a festival splash en route to a big opening and an Oscar campaign. Until the actors strike is resolved, director-star Bradley Cooper won’t be able to promote his second feature “Maestro” (Netflix), in which he plays New York conductor-composer Leonard Bernstein. (The film plays at the Venice and New York Film festivals.) Many indies obtained promotional wavers for the fall festivals.
As always, a raft of biopics will compete in the Oscar fray. Early buzz is upbeat on veteran Ridley Scott’s pricey epic “Napoleon” (Apple Original Films/Sony Pictures), toplining Oscar-winner Joaquin Phoenix (“Joker”) and nominee Vanessa Kirby (“Pieces of a Woman”). In “Priscilla” (A24), Oscar-winner Sofia Coppola (“Lost in Translation) pits Jacob Elordi as Elvis opposite Cailee Spaeny (“Mare of Easttown”) in the title role.
Michael Mann (“The Insider”) also hits the fall fests with racing biopic “Ferrari” (Neon), starring Adam Driver, who played Italian in “House of Gucci,” alongside Penélope Cruz. Reinaldo Marcus Green’s follow-up to Oscar-winning “King Richard” is music biopic “Marley: One Love” (Paramount) starring “One Night in Miami” breakout Kingsley Ben-Adir. Documentarians Jimmy Chin and Chai Vasarhelyi tackle the life of swimmer Diana Nyad (Annette Bening) in their first fiction foray “Nyad” (Netflix).
On the fiction side, Oscar perennial Alexander Payne returns with Christmas movie “The Holdovers” (Focus), reunited with his “Sideways” star Paul Giamatti. Yorgos Lanthimos (“The Favourite”) gets back together with Emma Stone in sci-fi romance “Poor Things” (Searchlight), which wowed Venice and Telluride ahead of its pushed back December release. In a follow-up to her Oscar-winning “Promising Young Woman,” Emerald Fennell portrays the British upper crust in “Saltburn” (Amazon Studios), starring Rosamund Pike, Barry Keoghan, and Carey Mulligan.
Festival reaction could determine the fate of several movies. The Academy’s lack of affection for some genre fare could impact the reception for David Fincher’s thriller “The Killer” (Netflix) starring Michael Fassbender as an assassin under threat, and Jeff Nichols’ motorcycle road movie “Bikeriders” (20th Century Studios), starring Tom Hardy, Jodie Comer, and Austin Butler.
Potential nominees are listed in alphabetical order; no film will be deemed a frontrunner until we have seen it.
Frontrunners
“Air”
“All of Us Strangers”
“Anatomy of a Fall”
“Asteroid City”
“Barbie”
“Killers of the Flower Moon”
“Oppenheimer”
“Past Lives”
“Poor Things”
“The Zone of Interest”
Contenders
“The Bikeriders”
“Ferrari”
“The Holdovers”
“The Killer”
“Maestro”
“Bob Marley: One Love”
“May December”
“Napoleon”
“Nyad”
“Priscilla”
“Saltburn”
