The halfway point of 2025 brought the first official preseason Oscar rankings from several pundits, including those at NBP. Nonetheless, preseason picks in July and August don’t usually work out, as the only major thing most people got right in July and August 2024 was picking “Anora” and “Conclave” to win the Screenplay Oscars. Otherwise, very early pegged favorites like “Blitz,” “Sing Sing” and “Queer” either underperformed or missed out completely, much like “The Color Purple” in 2023, “Babylon,” “Bardo,” “The Son” and “Empire of Light” in 2022, “House of Gucci” and “The Hand of God” in 2021, “News of the World” in 2020 and “Just Mercy” in 2019.
As much as it may be less useful to pick what films will lead the Oscar race in early 2026, than to figure out what supposed contenders will drop out entirely by the end of 2025. So, which of the very early first leaders will be among the first to fall this year?
“After The Hunt”
This is the somewhat surprising initial leader in NBP’s first picks, as the staff foresees wins in Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress for Julia Roberts, and Best Supporting Actress for Ayo Edebiri. If anything, it adds one more bullseye to its back when it premieres at the Venice Film Festival – but will it really hit those targets?
As the latest film from the seemingly long overdue Luca Guadagnino, the potential return to Oscar season for Roberts, the potential Oscar season breakthrough for Emmy winner Edebiri and the potential to be the hottest button social commentary of the fall, the sky and the controversy may be the limit if it hits big at Venice. However, most pundits thought Guadagnino would do all this with “Queer” last year at Venice, especially after setting his fans on fire with “Challengers” mere months earlier, and it didn’t turn out that way.
Between both “Challengers” and “Queer” getting shut out on Oscar nomination morning, the lack of awards attention for any Guadagnino film since “Call Me by Your Name” and the fact he didn’t even get nominated for that either, is the Academy too hard-wired against Guadagnino for “After The Hunt” to get major nominations, much less wins? Perhaps if this is far more accessible to the mainstream than the likes of “Queer,” “Suspiria,” and “Bones and All,” it might turn out differently. But depending on what it really has to say about #MeToo and sexual assault allegations – especially in the current climate of 2025 – it could still be too divisive in a far different and far more challenging to overcome fashion, and not just for one side of the issue.
“After The Hunt” could indeed be an across-the-board contender in major categories, or it could only turn out to be a play/comeback narrative vehicle for Roberts – and maybe that would be a best-case scenario. Amazon/MGM tends to get their top-priority film into the Best Picture category. Yet, their nominees usually go from preseason frontrunners to barely making the cut or underperforming in the end, like “Licorice Pizza,” “Women Talking,” and “Nickel Boys” did. “American Fiction” was an unexpected success, yet MGM bought it after it emerged from nowhere in Toronto first.
“After The Hunt” will not be coming in under the radar, as the first NBP charts reinforced. Will it hold up under such scrutiny to be the most debated, relevant, and maybe rewarded film of the race, or will it be yet another preseason leader that is just a bunch of hot air after all?
“Sinners”
“Sinners” is already the trickiest wild card of this season in more ways than one. While the NBP staff didn’t pick it to win the top Oscars, it barely fell short of first place in Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay. Since it is the most acclaimed film of the first half of the year by a very wide margin, and the biggest domestic grossing non-IP film in almost a generation, the guitars are already strumming and singing out for “Sinners” to not only get nominated, but to win it all as well – or at least wind up with the most nominations this year.
Given “Sinners” box office success and rave reviews, it’s likely that it’s getting in. However, it could still be overestimated as a win-competitive or across-the-board contender, simply because we don’t know what its full competition will be. It’s very easy to say it will do big when almost nothing else has matched it in the first half of the year, like “Dune: Part Two” in 2024 and “Past Lives” in 2023, before they finished in the lower end of the Best Picture field. And while “Sinners” isn’t a sequel like “Dune: Part Two” and isn’t an indie film like “Past Lives,” there are many more myriad racial and genre biases that can still work against it.
By mid-November, when almost every supposedly more Oscar-friendly film has screened, when the likes of “Wicked: For Good” and “Avatar: Fire and Ash” will then test their own blockbuster crossover potential, and when at least a few other Oscar favorites have matched “Sinners” acclaim and unanimous raves – or so we assume – then we will know if “Sinners” really has a path to history, or if a mere Best Picture nomination is the most it should shoot for.
“Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere”
Recency bias is a very real thing, as we often assume what happened in one Oscar season will happen again in the next one. The test case for this year is the Bruce Springsteen film “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere,” as it is projected to receive nominations for Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, and Best Adapted Screenplay, similar to “A Complete Unknown” last year.
Even if it doesn’t get all those, another easy assumption will be that the Academy will check off a Best Actor win for someone playing a musician anyway – like it did for director Scott Cooper’s last music-centered film “Crazy Heart” and Jeff Bridges, and like it did for many an actor playing real life musicians. And since Jeremy Allen White is playing Springsteen right after winning multiple Emmys for “The Bear” and potentially winning another one this September, the added assumption will be that awards voters will flock to him once again, despite this being a far different voting body.
Nonetheless, history doesn’t always repeat itself, not even with the Oscars and musical biopics. Just because Rami Malek and “Bohemian Rhapsody” won big in 2018, it wasn’t repeated by subsequent music biopic nominees and actors like “Elvis” and Austin Butler, or “A Complete Unknown” and Timothee Chalamet – especially since each film didn’t win a single Oscar. And while “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere” shares the same surface similarities as “A Complete Unknown,” it opens two months earlier in October, instead of December, and can’t peak at voting time in the same way. As such, if it doesn’t achieve the same solid review scores and box office as “Elvis” and “A Complete Unknown” did, and if it can’t overcome potential backlash like “Bohemian Rhapsody” did, it could quickly fall off the Oscar charts.
Since musical biopics haven’t been winning Oscars lately, it’s only a matter of time before a projected frontrunner emerges that doesn’t even get nominated. At the least, maybe it will be an Allen White play only with nothing coming along for the ride, unlike “A Complete Unknown.” Those with memories of last year may find that hard to believe, but sometimes one Oscar season is very different from the one before.
“Jay Kelly”
Recency bias doesn’t always work out, as “White Noise” didn’t perform well in 2022, being Noah Baumbach’s first movie since “Marriage Story.” However, since “Jay Kelly” seems to be a much bigger film and awards-friendly swing from Baumbach, expectations are high that it will recapture the “Marriage Story” magic instead. To that end, NBP charts have it as the initial leader for Best Original Screenplay, and also have George Clooney and Adam Sandler in the top three for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor, respectively.
Still, Baumbach’s past nominations and the success of “Marriage Story” may or may not make him a Sean Baker or Christopher Nolan-level “It’s his time” candidate. And while Clooney was a perennial nominee and contender in the 2000s, the last time he got there was 14 years and several changes to the Academy’s voting body ago. If anything, Sandler might have a stronger “overdue” narrative after his 2019 snub for “Uncut Gems” and putting so many past critical bombs behind him – but if he breaks through, will the film and Baumbach come with him?
It may depend on what Netflix’s priorities are, as it also has “Frankenstein,” “Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery,” “Nouvelle Vague,” “A House of Dynamite,” “The Ballad Of A Small Player,” “Left-Handed Girl,” and others. The NBP staff has both “Jay Kelly” and “Frankenstein” in the preseason field of 10, yet the days when Netflix automatically got two films into Best Picture have faded since 2021. Nowadays, only one film of theirs is left standing by the end – and there’s no absolute guarantee that film will be “Jay Kelly.”
“Wicked: For Good”
In July 2024, “Wicked” wasn’t widely regarded as a possible Best Picture nominee, even by the most optimistic fans of the musical. Now 12 months, several Oscar nominations, and a few wins later, “Wicked: For Good” is as much of a default preseason Best Picture nomination pick as “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere” and “Avatar: Fire and Ash” are, due to recent history if nothing else. Yet after Part One exceeded expectations, will this set up Part Two to do the exact opposite?
Given that most “Wicked” aficionados never liked Act 2 of the musical as much as Act 1, it doesn’t suggest critics will be that much higher on “Wicked: For Good” than they were for “Wicked” either. And with both “Sinners” and “Avatar: Fire and Ash” also filling out the blockbuster contender quota this year, “Wicked: For Good” may have to exceed at least the original’s box office to stand out. For that matter, either Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande, or both may need to be nominated and win this time around for extra insurance.
Blockbuster sequels tend to do worse with the Oscars than their nominated predecessors lately, but those sequels weren’t the final act of their story like this one is. Yet does “Wicked” as a musical and Part One of a movie have enough cache and love to get nominated on legacy and a farewell note alone, if not on a “The Lord of the Rings: The Return Of The King” level? It may actually need to be better than Part One to be absolutely certain – and some viewers, more than others, already know that could be too tall an order.
“One Battle After Another”
Judging just by the NBP charts, it’s hard to say “One Battle After Another” is being overrated this preseason. However, the NBP staff is considerably less optimistic on it than most other early pundits, as it has the film missing every single major nomination except Best Adapted Screenplay – and yet they have it winning that category anyway.
Considering the film’s high budget and uphill box office battle, the potential political fallout, the perhaps too high bar of Paul Thomas Anderson’s past classics, and the fact Warner Bros already has “Sinners” as its likely top priority, there are many tough battles ahead for “One Battle After Another” indeed. Leaving aside Leonardo DiCaprio’s near perfect recent record of getting films into Best Picture, Anderson’s near perfect record in the 2000s of his films getting at least one major nomination, the possibility of Sean Penn being a nominee for the first time since “Milk,” and the considerable potential advantage of Anderson’s “overdue” narrative, there could be too much faith for this film in one way or another.
If anything, the biggest way it is being overestimated is in the Best Adapted Screenplay category. If the NBP pundits are making it the overwhelming Best Adapted Screenplay favorite, despite not nominating it anywhere else, that is quite an indictment of the projected Adapted field. Aside from how no film in the expanded era has won a Screenplay Oscar without a Best Picture nomination – and how “A Real Pain” flirted with it but fell short last year – are the hopes to give Anderson any Oscar so high, and the other possible contenders so flimsy, that we can automatically hand it a win here even if the rest of the film goes nowhere?
“Conclave” blew out the Adapted field in a walk last year, so recency bias may make it easier to think this year’s Adapted race will be a laugher too. If so, maybe “One Battle After Another” doesn’t really need to be a new Anderson classic to win something, especially since we’re all accustomed to people winning for less than their best work if they’re overdue. In that context, it’s tempting to overrate “One Battle After Another” if only in just one category.
But if even the lowest expectations are too high and it’s only a sole Screenplay nominee, like “Inherent Vice,” how will that make these early picks look then?
What do you think of the Next Best Picture team’s first Oscar predictions of the season? How much do you think they will change from where they are now? What do you agree or disagree with the most? Please let us know in the comments section below and on Next Best Picture’s X account.
You can follow Robert and hear more of his thoughts on the Oscars & Film on X @Robertdoc1984
