When the very first Oscar projections from the likes of NBP and Gold Derby came out to start July, there was one Oscar season staple missing – any film from Searchlight Pictures. As far as anyone could see, the only fall film Searchlight had set for its Oscar stable was “Rental Family,” and that wasn’t on anyone’s radar on July 1st. Yet two weeks later, after “Rental Family” secured a TIFF World Premiere slot while building increased buzz from Oscar pundits, it may be worth asking if it isn’t just a potential Best Picture nominee, but one of the few preseason favorites that could really win the whole thing.
Not a single teaser or a snippet of footage has been released, and Searchlight only released the first teaser image of Brendan Fraser reading a book the day its TIFF premiere was announced. As such, it hasn’t shown anything officially that would justify this sudden surge in momentum, and yet the tea leaves have started to drift in its direction.
“Rental Family” could be the 2025 version of “The Brutalist,” which wasn’t on anyone’s radar or Oscar projections in early July 2024, but gathered enough promising buzz and anonymous chatter over the next two months to set up a big burst at fall festival season. While “The Brutalist” launched at Venice, “Rental Family” will start off at Toronto, where it may be tailor-made to be a People’s Choice Award contender if not winner right out of the gate.
The premise of Fraser as an out of work actor hired by a Japanese “Rental Family” company to play “various stand-in roles in other people’s lives” sounds just like the kind of crowd pleasing, possibly broad and possibly sentimental film that wins at TIFF, like “Green Book,” “Jojo Rabbit,” “Belfast,” “The Fabelmans,” or “The Life of Chuck.” It also sounds like a recipe to be an Oscar season “villain,” if there’s enough backlash in other circles over its premise, its focus on a white lead in a Japanese-set story, its implications and its potential easy sentiment – especially if it becomes the main competition to harder hitting films and critical darlings like “Sinners,” “Sentimental Value,” and others. And although Fraser was a feel-good comeback story for his Oscar win in 2022, “The Whale” was still an Oscar season villain to many beyond that story.
However, unlike “Green Book,” this is a movie about a white man who rediscovers himself among minorities, directed by a female Japanese director, Hikari, who is also the co-writer. At the least, it likely won’t be this year’s “Emilia Perez,” if only because Hikari probably won’t mishandle specific cultural issues and settings like Frenchman Jacques Audiard did regarding Mexico. Since Hikari has only directed episodes of “Beef” and “Tokyo Vice” in America, and since there’s no teaser or footage yet to indicate what the tone and style of “Rental Family” actually is, it could be anything from broadly comedic to experimental and serious for all anyone knows right now.
At the moment, faith in whatever “Rental Family” is seems to be growing. More experts from NBP and Gold Derby are putting it on their updated preseason ballots lately, and its TIFF premiere and November 21 general release date indicate Searchlight is going all in with it. Part of it may be because Searchlight has nothing else to work with yet, and hasn’t made any moves to purchase any past or upcoming festival movies as backup plans. However, if this is indeed Searchlight’s one and only big play for Oscar season, its long and storied Oscar history over the last 15 years suggests it can push very far.
Searchlight has had sort of a mixed bag since its last Best Picture win for “Nomadland” in 2020, as the likes of “The Banshees of Inisherin” and “A Complete Unknown” were shut out completely on Oscar night, and acting wins for Jessica Chastain and Kieran Culkin were for films that didn’t receive Best Picture nominations. This suggests that Searchlight isn’t as infallible as it was when it had multiple Best Picture winners in the 2010s, or perhaps it just hints that it is overdue.
Currently, “Rental Family” may be surging as a film that more experts see as a Best Picture nominee, but not as one that can win Best Picture. For now, the likes of “Sinners” and “Sentimental Value” have been labeled the early favorites – if only because they’re the biggest films that have been screened so far – while NBP has films like “After the Hunt,” “Jay Kelly,” “Bugonia,” and “Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere” as the most likely favorites sight unseen. However, if one goes by historical trends alone, pretty much every supposed preseason favorite besides “Rental Family” has to be ruled out as a winner.
Because Netflix has never won Best Picture, and because attitudes towards streamers and streaming films are hardening, that would seem to rule out its crop of films like “Jay Kelly,” “Frankenstein,” “A House of Dynamite,” “The Ballad of a Small Player,” “Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery,” “Train Dreams,” and more as movies that can actually win. Because Focus has never won Best Picture either, despite 20 years of near misses, it would seem to rule out “Bugonia” and “Hamnet” as films that could win in the end, too.
Blockbuster sequels like “Avatar: Fire and Ash” and “Wicked: For Good” have to be ruled out unless they are on a “The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King” level, while “Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere” has to be ruled out since musical biopics win acting Oscars but not Best Picture, and “After the Hunt” must be ruled out if it is another MGM preseason favorite that underachieves overall like “Licorice Pizza,” “Nickel Boys,” and “Women Talking” did. And for all the buzz around “Sentimental Value” and the rest of NEON’s Cannes hits like “The Secret Agent” and “It Was Just an Accident,” it’s hard to imagine Oscar voters giving the same studio two Best Picture winners in a row like they did for Searchlight in 2013 and 2014.
If all those historical trends warrant knocking out all these presumed preseason favorites, then that leaves almost none of them left. There’s “Sinners” and “One Battle After Another” for Warner Bros, but they both have their own history working against them. As Warner Bros hasn’t had a Best Picture winner since “Argo” in 2012, Paul Thomas Anderson and his past classics have fallen short so many times, and nothing like “Sinners” has ever won Best Picture before. Beyond that, something without those kinds of asterisks is “Marty Supreme,” which seems to be A24’s biggest, if not only, realistic play for Best Picture contention. Yet, perhaps getting Timothée Chalamet his Best Actor Oscar is the most this giant, $70M+ question mark about a table tennis champion could end up shooting for.
In all honesty, “Rental Family” is one of the few early favorites, if not the only one, that won’t have to make history or defy some daunting Oscar precedents to win. It is from a studio in Searchlight that has mastered Oscar season time and again, if not quite as much lately, it won’t start out with a full on preseason bullseye on its back until it screens at and possibly wins TIFF, and has the potential to be broadly appealing to old school Oscar voters yet perhaps just diverse and sensitive enough for new school voters too.
If something like “Sinners” isn’t up enough voters alley, if something like “One Battle After Another” or “After the Hunt” is too politically or culturally controversial, if something like “Marty Supreme” is too odd, if something like “Sentimental Value” isn’t big enough, or if Netflix and Focus still can’t get over the hump, then by process of elimination alone there’s almost no other preseason favorites that fit the bill. So, unless something makes Academy history or history for their studio, or if there’s something else absolutely no one sees coming right now, then “Rental Family” is really the biggest future contender that checks every potential box for voters.
It could have still mixed critical scores from TIFF after all this, but that hasn’t stopped many a People’s Choice winner or future Oscar winner. Even then, if the right kinds of voters love it and drown out any backlash, it could be a feel-good winner like “CODA” or a more indie-friendly but still life-affirming winner like Searchlight’s own “Nomadland.” Of course, once Searchlight eventually releases a teaser and makes it easier to determine what this film is actually about, its tone and approach, and who it is really intended for, all this can either become moot or more relevant than ever.
No one noticed “Rental Family” in early July, but more people certainly have an eye on it in mid-July. And by early September, to say nothing of early March, it could be downright unavoidable.
What did you think of the TIFF announcement yesterday? Are you looking forward to seeing “Rental Family?” Do you think it will be Searchlight’s big Oscar contender this year? Please let us know in the comments section below and on Next Best Picture’s X account and check out the team’s latest Oscar predictions here.
You can follow Robert and hear more of his thoughts on the Oscars & Film on X @Robertdoc1984
