At this moment, most Best Picture talk revolves around whether “You Can See Everything” could be the first documentary Best Picture nominee or even winner, whether “La Bola Negra’s” early box office success can help it become Netflix’s first-ever winner and the first LGBTQ+ led winner in 10 years, and whether the anticipation for “Dune: Part Three” can pay off with a saga-capping victory.
Yet in the meantime, the actual long-presumed favorite in “The Odyssey” isn’t getting as much buzz, hype, or excitement as a potential winner like it did in summer. As such, is this a case of “The Odyssey” biding its time until it storms back ahead and looks inevitable again – or has “frontrunner fatigue” started early enough to start looming as a real problem?
Pundits don’t appear to be affected yet, as the Next Best Picture team still has “The Odyssey” and “La Bola Negra” neck and neck in first-place votes like they have been for months – even with a few votes going to “You Can See Everything” too – and Gold Derby pundits still have “The Odyssey” leading by a wide margin. But since “The Odyssey” has been the projected leader for months on end already, and since even the fall festivals didn’t do much to change that, maybe there’s a growing sense of boredom in other circles online and the Oscar community.
If there wasn’t, maybe so many wouldn’t be trying to push a documentary as a Best Picture-winning threat right now, no matter how historic its run is threatening to be. If there wasn’t, maybe the prospect of a film like “La Bola Negra” winning wouldn’t sound historic in its own right, even to a greater degree than Christopher Nolan winning his second Best Picture and Best Director Oscars in a row. And if there wasn’t, there might not be so much hope and pressure put on “Dune: Part Three” as the presumed last chance to shake up the whole race.
With every new milestone from “You Can See Everything,” every new fan won over by “La Bola Negra” actually playing in theaters before it goes on Netflix, and with every new tease of “Dune: Part Three” hyping it up to a fever pitch, something like “The Odyssey” may feel like older news and a less exciting option to lead and define the coming Oscar race. But is this just a temporary loss of perspective until voting actually starts, or a real sign that more and more people could start seeing “The Odyssey” as the predictable and far too anticlimactic option, even in the industry?
If this becomes a real problem, the last few Best Picture winners didn’t have to deal with it this early, for a variety of reasons. By November of last year, “One Battle After Another” had only just come out, was still enjoying the kind of near-unanimous raves and adoration “You Can See Everything” is getting now, and hadn’t been out long enough for fatigue over its newfound frontrunner status to set in. By the time any might have come up, it was clear by then that “One Battle After Another” and “Sinners” would be 1-2 by a mile all season, and few really had a problem with that.
In 2024, “Anora” was certainly a frontrunner by November, but not by a wide enough margin to have fatigue growing over it. Since there was already a four-film race between it, “Conclave,” “The Brutalist,” and “Emilia Peréz,” it was too unsettled for frontrunner fatigue to be a factor for very long – and most backlash that season fell on “Emilia Peréz” for many other reasons anyway.
Of course, the winner that most would judge “The Odyssey” against isn’t “Anora” or “One Battle After Another,” but “Oppenheimer.” After all, no one was seriously mad that Nolan’s epic was the frontrunner since summer, and almost no one was begging for another contender to make it a nail-biting race. So, given that “The Odyssey” had an even bigger box office than “Oppenheimer” and similar review scores, why should this Nolan epic not have had such smooth sailing?
One obvious answer is that “Oppenheimer” was the film that finally gave Nolan his first Oscars, whereas “The Odyssey” doesn’t carry the same urgency to give him a few more for his very next movie. In addition, while “The Odyssey” was a $600+ million movie domestically and made over a billion worldwide, it isn’t the box office story of 2026 in the way that “Oppenheimer” shared that title with “Barbie” in 2023 – or in the way that films like “Obsession,” “You Can See Everything,” and “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” are this year. Compared to rule-breaking Gen Z phenomena and the new highest-grossing movie in American history, even the biggest R-rated and IMAX movie of all time with the best reviews of the summer feels less historically fresh and new.
Thanks to “Oppenheimer” and many other past Nolan films, not everyone argued that Nolan broke new ground with “The Odyssey,” or at least that it felt as new as before. So, as much as Nolan winning Best Picture for a second film in a row would break ground in the modern era, many might see it as the same old, same old instead of Oscar history to be celebrated. On the other hand, it wouldn’t be seen that way if the winner was Netflix’s first Best Picture and one of the very few to be about lead LGBTQ+ characters, or if it was the first ever documentary nominee and winner, or if it was the overdue triumph of the biggest non-superhero franchise of the decade after two straight losses.
At the very least, in this rather early stage of the season, daydreaming about such history and landmarks is natural to get excited over, instead of the kind of outcome we already saw three years ago – and exciting to imagine instead of the kind of sweep most figured this race would be since summer. In that context, the surges of “La Bola Negra” and “You Can See Everything” and the countdown for “Dune: Part Three” are a lot more thrilling to talk about than a sweep for “The Odyssey,” and threaten to make that film look like a buzzkill if and when it starts dominating again.
This sort of thing happened in a way during November 2022, when it was safe to assume the industry would just let Steven Spielberg win again for “The Fabelmans.” Meanwhile, an out-of-nowhere phenomenon like “Everything Everywhere All at Once” looked like something to only daydream about as a winner before reality set in. But instead, “The Fabelmans” peaked too early, while “Everything Everywhere All at Once” kept rewriting the presumed rules and caught fire all the way to Oscar night. Then again, “The Fabelmans” peaked as a frontrunner before it even came out in theaters, and never came close to the kind of box office run, industry support, and across-the-board nomination potential that “The Odyssey” has.
Still, 2022 showed that not every early frontrunner is truly inevitable just because it has a past winner behind it, and not every unprecedented contender will ultimately fall short of industry acceptance. “Everything Everywhere All at Once” was an underdog darling that benefited from not being a full-on juggernaut until it was too late to stop it, which fellow A24 breakout “You Can See Everything” is certainly hoping to do as well. On the other hand, “La Bola Negra” and “Dune: Part Three” have been assumed heavyweights from the jump. However, as long as “The Odyssey” is still considered favored over them, they don’t have to worry about the kind of bullseyes and fatigue “The Odyssey” is already facing.
It was one thing for “The Odyssey” to feel inevitable and unstoppable in summer, or after the fall festivals. But now that “La Bola Negra” and “You Can See Everything” have each become options with historic narratives greater than “The Odyssey” has, and now that “Dune: Part Three” is inching closer to finally showing itself, the prospect of “The Odyssey” still cruising could start to be seen as disappointing instead of deserved – if not something that could draw more heated backlash down the line.
Maybe it only feels this way because “The Odyssey” came out so long ago, and has been out of the general limelight while others stole the spotlight lately. But that won’t be the case for much longer, since “The Odyssey” is officially starting its Academy screenings and special campaign events on November 9th, right before it comes on digital and gets rewatched and reexamined all over again starting November 17th. Then by the time critics’ awards and major nominations start in early December, “The Odyssey” will be fresh on everyone’s minds again – and by then, perhaps have enough new fans and renewed passion from old fans to look as gigantic as it did in summer.
By then, “La Bola Negra” will have hit Netflix and faced far bigger and wider scrutiny, “You Can See Everything” will have begun its very difficult path as a documentary taking on narrative features at awards shows, and “Dune: Part Three” will put its massive hype on the line. In mere weeks, the idea of anything beating “The Odyssey” could look as foolish as it did months ago, whether that feels like a letdown to fans or not. On the other hand, what if any possible fatigue over “The Odyssey” leading the race turns out to be longer-lasting, and something more than temporary online boredom?
What do you think is the Best Picture frontrunner right now? Are there other contenders in the mix? Please let us know in the comments section below and on Next Best Picture’s X account, and check out Next Best Picture’s latest Oscar predictions here.
