Focus Features has never won a Best Picture Oscar. The arthouse sister studio to Universal Pictures has a very impressive track record of Best Picture nominations since its creation in 2002, with 16 nominees in this category. That includes two Best Picture nominees (“Darkest Hour” and “Phantom Thread“) at the 90th Academy Awards, as well as Best Picture nominees at six of the last seven Oscar ceremonies. However, a Best Picture win, which other indie labels like Searchlight Pictures, DreamWorks, Miramax, Neon, and A24 have secured, proves continuously elusive. Even Focus Features chief Peter Kujawski openly admitted Focus Features had no Best Picture winners in its library while pushing “Belfast” for such an honor in 2022. Even without that victory in its history, Focus Features is still a tremendous fixture of the awards season landscape. That’s bound to continue this year since the studio has a robust slate of titles it will be pushing across the 2024-2025 awards season circuit.
The most obvious awards season candidate in the 2024 Focus Features slate is the early November 2024 title, “Conclave.” For starters, this project is launching in a release slot that Focus Features previously launched eventual Best Picture nominees like “Belfast,” “The Theory of Everything,” and “The Holdovers.” That alone signals confidence, while the cast is full of Oscar-friendly players like Ralph Fiennes and Stanley Tucci. Plus, it hails from director Edward Berger, helmer of the 2022 Oscar darling, “All Quiet on The Western Front.”
“Conclave” has all the ingredients to become Oscar catnip, and you can bet Focus Features will push it aggressively. That’s not the only potential Oscar nominee Focus Features is handling in North America in that stretch. However, “Conclave” is the only grounded drama that will drop into American theaters in the final four months of 2024. That could allow Focus Features to truly zero in on this Berger directorial effort and push it for Best Picture with all available resources. It’s the inverse of Netflix dropping a bunch of movies in the final three months of the year and hoping one takes off as an Oscar darling (a strategy they’re wisely not deploying this year).
Nearly two months after “Conclave” comes “Nosferatu,” the latest Robert Eggers period piece. This creepy horror feature drops on Christmas Day and is being pushed first and foremost as a mainstream piece of genre cinema. However, the acclaim surrounding Eggers (as well as his 2019 feature “The Lighthouse” securing a Best Cinematography Oscar nod) means there could be some potential Oscar nominations waiting in the wings for this feature. Most likely, technical categories are where “Nosferatu” would flourish most, like Best Costume Design, Best Production Design, and Best Sound. Those are the places where a horror film has the best chance of getting any Oscar nominations. If it gets as much acclaim as past Eggers movies, though, perhaps “Nosferatu” will be the movie where the Academy finally showers his works in nominations.
Before those two, Focus Features is also premiering the Pharrell Williams biopic, “Piece by Piece,” in theaters in October. A retelling of the life of Williams through LEGO minifigures, Focus Features is bringing this animated Morgan Neville feature to the Toronto International Film Festival in hopes of drumming up some Oscar buzz, especially in the Best Original Song, Documentary, and Animated Feature categories. Achieving some nominations there isn’t impossible, but if the Academy failed to hand a Best Animated Feature nomination to the 2014 “LEGO Movie,” is “Piece by Piece” going to stand a chance of getting similar Oscar nominations?
This year’s Focus Features awards season ambitions don’t just lie within the final four months. Some titles from 2024’s earlier months could score Focus Features some Oscar nominations. “Dìdi,” for instance, could translate its enormous Sundance buzz into Oscar nominations. Granted, similar titles like “Eighth Grade” got entirely snubbed by the Academy Awards, so historical precedent suggests “Dìdi” will get lost in the shuffle. However, expect Focus Features to give the feature the old college try in awards campaigning, especially in the Best Original Screenplay category.
Then there’s “The Bikeriders,” which was once set to kick off December 2023 and be a potential 2023-2024 awards season player. Pushed to June 2024, the feature’s greatest hope for an Oscar nomination could be a long-shot Best Supporting Actor nod for Tom Hardy. It’s doubtful that happens, but expect Focus Features to push “The Bikeriders” all the same, especially since it was inevitably going to get a significant awards season campaign on its initial release date. Meanwhile, early 2024 Focus Features bombs like “Drive-Away Dolls,” “Back to Black,” and “The American Society of Magical Negroes” have a 0% chance of getting any Oscar nominations. There’s just no momentum there.
There’s also a chance Focus Features could acquire distribution rights to a major fall 2024 film festival darling and push that title for Oscar glory. Think how Searchlight (back when it was Fox Searchlight) picked up “The Wrestler” in 2008 after its buzzy premiere. However, in the last decade, Focus Features has shifted towards developing projects in-house and only occasionally acquires films at Sundance for summertime releases. A rare fall festival acquisition like “The Holdovers” is held until the following year so that Focus Features can get a proper release strategy together, not thrown into theaters two months after its premiere. All that is to say, don’t expect Focus Features to suddenly pluck up “Eden” or “Queer” for North America and turn those into its next great Oscar hopefuls.
With this varied slate of releases, Focus Features has the potential to secure Oscar nominations in a bevy of different categories, ranging from Best Animated Feature to technical domains to Best Picture itself. Over each of the last three Oscar ceremonies, Focus Features has consistently scored five to seven Oscar nominations. This year’s hefty slate of projects could very easily score a nomination haul in that same range, especially if “Conclave” takes off. A Best Picture win may even be within reach, especially with such a strong slate.
What do you think is Focus Features’ best chances for scoring Oscar nominations this year? Please let us know in the comments below or on Next Best Picture’s X account and be sure to check out Next Best Picture’s latest Oscar predictions here.
You can follow Lisa and hear more of her thoughts on the Oscars & Film on her portfolio here
