Much of the 2025 Oscar night and the entire Oscar season were about the battle between “One Battle After Another” and “Sinners.” Nonetheless, other stories and takeaways from this now-concluded season weren’t just about comparing these two films; other lessons from this year should be handy to remember for next season. Here are the other biggest storylines, lasting memories, and reinforced trends from the 2025 Oscar race.
Warner Bros. Surpassed A24 For The Most Dominant Oscar Sweep Ever
Only three years ago, A24 had an Oscar night that didn’t look like it would be surpassed for a long time, as it won seven of the eight major categories. Yet in almost no time, Warner Bros not only matched it but improved upon it.
A24’s major 2022 wins came almost entirely from “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” as it won six above-the-line Oscars while A24’s second priority, “The Whale,” scrounged up just one for Best Actor Brendan Fraser. In 2025, Warner Bros spread the wealth a little more despite some early doubt that it would, as “One Battle After Another” won four top Oscars, “Sinners” won two in Best Actor and Best Original Screenplay, and a third Warner Bros. film in “Weapons” had its sole nominee Amy Madigan hold off fellow Warner Bros. nominees Teyana Taylor and Wunmi Mosaku in Best Supporting Actress.
With three Warner Bros. films winning the biggest Oscars instead of two, and without just one film sweeping, this is now the gold standard for a studio in the modern Oscar era. Though as A24’s win shutout in 2025 and Warner Bros.’ upcoming sale prove, it doesn’t take long for a studio’s historic Oscar night to become a very distant memory.
A New Category May Have Made A Massive Impact Already
One of the biggest “what ifs” of the night is what might have been if “Sinners” won the first Best Casting Oscar as predicted, instead of “One Battle After Another.” If the rest of the results before Best Picture stayed the same, this one change would have given “Sinners” a 5-4 lead for most wins of the night before the final envelope – and then could that have pointed to a different outcome for Best Picture? If not, would “One Battle After Another” winning it after losing such momentum have made its victory look more surprising or controversial, or would it have been more fitting to have both films end in a 5-5 tie for wins then?
While those questions may never be answered, the question of what precedent this first Best Casting Oscar set will eventually be answered down the line. Will future Best Casting results correlate with or even outright decide Best Picture too, and prove to be as important for a Best Picture win package as an individual acting or screenplay win – or will this first outcome prove to be an outlier for the next few Best Casting Oscars ahead?
SAG Changed Its Name And Its Fortunes Against BAFTA
The SAG Awards became the ACTOR Awards in 2025, and also became something it hadn’t been in three years – the decisive acting precursor over BAFTA.
For the last two years, BAFTA proved to be the tiebreaker in all close acting races, but this year it was SAG/ACTOR’s turn. Several circumstances made that possible this year, such as the ACTOR Awards being held before Oscar voting ended, unlike in 2024; BAFTA failing to nominate Madigan at all; and BAFTA choosing “I Swear’s” Robert Aramayo over any Oscar nominee for Best Actor.
Every year since 2018, either BAFTA, the ACTOR, or both have matched the Oscar acting winners at 4/4. There have been especially wild swings these last few years, from the ACTOR going 4/4 in 2022 while BAFTA went 0/4, to BAFTA rallying back with two straight 4/4 seasons before it was the ACTOR’s turn again this year. Does that mean it is the ACTOR’s turn to secure its own two-year winning streak next year – or will we already know the answer as soon as their dates are announced?
The Golden Globes And Critics’ Choice Awards Were Dead Wrong As Acting Precursors
Although BAFTA couldn’t match the ACTOR awards this year, both precursors did far better than the Golden Globes and Critics’ Choice did. In fact, the two late televised awards shows asserted their superiority over the first two televised shows more than ever before this season, at least when it came to acting races.
Aside from Jessie Buckley’s sweep for “Hamnet,” the only other time a future acting winner won a Golden Globe or a Critics Choice award was when Madigan took the Critics Choice. Overall, the future winners of Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress were a combined 1-for-6 in both shows, as Michael B. Jordan lost the Drama Golden Globe to Wagner Moura in “The Secret Agent,” the Critics Choice went to Timothée Chalamet for “Marty Supreme,” Sean Penn lost to Stellan Skarsgard (“Sentimental Value“) and Jacob Elordi (“Frankenstein“) at the Globes and Critics Choice respectively, and Madigan lost the Golden Globe to Taylor after beating her at the Critics’ Choice.
It has long been argued that the Golden Globes and Critics’ Choice mean nothing as major precursors compared to BAFTA and the ACTOR – and this year, those critics of these critics got to have bragging rights over them too.
Festival Season Meant Less Than Ever Before
Once upon a time, it was nearly impossible for a movie or an actor to win a major Oscar without premiering at a film festival first. But in 2025, film festivals had an off year across the board, at least when it came to big winners. In fact, since 2020, we have now had five Best Picture winners go on to win the top prize without debuting at one of the fall film festivals first: “CODA” (Premiered at Sundance), “Everything Everywhere All at Once” (Premiered at SXSW), “Oppenheimer,” “Anora‘ (Premiered at Cannes) and now, “One Battle After Another.”
“Sinners” and “One Battle After Another” played a huge part by premiering before and after the major festivals, so that this year could be written off as a fluke that way. Nevertheless, this was still the fifth consecutive year that a fall festival premiere did not win Best Picture (the last being “Nomadland” in 2020), and even Cannes failed to launch competitive contenders a year after premiering the 2024 Best Picture winner “Anora.”
Aside from Buckley winning Best Actress as soon as “Hamnet” premiered at Telluride, Cannes premiering international Best Picture nominees “Sentimental Value” and “The Secret Agent,” the New York Film Festival landing a “surprise” last minute premiere of “Marty Supreme,” and Venice premiering Best Picture nominees “Frankenstein” and “Bugonia” – although they both started with a thud there before getting stronger later – film festivals were almost a non-factor in the long run this season. As such, Cannes and the fall festivals have more to prove than they have in a long time for next season.
“One Battle After Another” Was The Latest Screening Best Picture Winner In Decades
Fall festivals are no longer necessary for Best Picture winners, but that doesn’t mean films can afford to start late. Ever since “The Departed” waited until after the fall festivals to screen and still won Best Picture, Best Picture winners have either played the fall festivals, opened in summer or at Cannes, or even started in the spring or at Sundance. But by a technicality, “One Battle After Another” broke this nearly two-decade losing streak for later starting movies.
The first screenings and social media reviews for “One Battle After Another” broke right in the middle of the Toronto Film Festival, so in that way, it didn’t really wait until right after the festivals to premiere. Nonetheless, it premiered to general audiences in late September without screening at a single festival first, which is the kind of thing no eventual Best Picture winner has done since “The Departed” premiered in early October 2006.
Still, the days of a “Chicago,” “Million Dollar Baby,” or a “The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King” waiting until winter to premiere and win Best Picture remain a distant memory – and no film in recent memory except “1917” has come close to winning Best Picture after waiting until late fall or winter to start screening. That is the next barrier to be broken, although history still doesn’t bode well for “Dune: Part Three” or anything else that might hold back until October or later next season.
Leonardo DiCaprio, Jesse Plemons, And Timothée Chalamet Remain The Greatest Good-Luck Charms Of Our Era
The most sure-fire way for any film to get a Best Picture nomination is for DiCaprio to star in it, as “One Battle After Another” is the sixth consecutive DiCaprio film, the eighth in the expanded era, and twelfth overall to get into Best Picture – although “One Battle After Another” is the first to win it all in that span since “The Departed” in 2006 and “Titanic” in 1997.
The second near-guaranteed way to secure a Best Picture nomination is for a film to cast DiCaprio’s “Killers of the Flower Moon” co-star Plemons. “Bugonia” became the eighth Best Picture nominee Plemons appeared in since 2015 – and in those 11 years, the only years without a Plemons film in Best Picture have been 2016, 2022, and 2024. Unlike DiCaprio, Plemons has only one personal acting nomination across all these films for “The Power Of The Dog,” and fell just short of a second with “Bugonia.”
If anything, this means “Digger” is all but guaranteed a Best Picture nomination in 2026, not because of Tom Cruise, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, or being a Warner Bros film – but because Plemons is in that too.
And finally, we come to Timothée Chalamet, who has now appeared in a whopping eight Best Picture nominees, starting in 2017 with “Call Me By Your Name” and “Lady Bird” and his latest being “Marty Supreme,” and all by the age of 30. We expect to see many, many more from the talented star whose career may not have even peaked yet, and is likely to score his ninth this year with “Dune: Part Three.”
Best Actress Wasn’t Chaotic For The First Time In Forever
In this decade, it has been unheard of for Best Actress to be the only acting category without any suspense. In fact, there have been many a year when Best Actress has been the only acting race undecided until the very end, and the single most chaotic category of an entire season. But for the first time since Renee Zellweger’s sweep in 2019, the 2025 Best Actress race had no real drama to speak of – and in fact, was the one single acting race not to have any for perhaps the first time in ages.
The category’s only significant intrigue and controversy was when Kate Hudson (“Song Sung Blue“) beat out Chase Infiniti (“One Battle After Another“) for the final Oscar nomination. Otherwise, once Buckley stormed ahead and never stopped, Rose Byrne secured her place as the runner-up. Once Renate Reinsve and the constantly returning Emma Stone secured their nominations well in advance, Best Actress stood alone in its utter predictability – which probably signals a return to its customary utter mayhem next season (much to the dismay of NBP’s own Josh Parham).
Best Actor Critics Season Champions Still Can’t Win Oscars
Best Actor industry precursors didn’t favor Jordan until the ACTOR Awards, though critics’ season precursors didn’t favor him either. Yet that is pretty much tradition when it comes to Best Actor, at a far greater rate than any other major category in this era.
Like Adrien Brody last year, Jordan had the second most overall Best Actor wins of the season and won the Oscar anyway. And like every Best Actor Oscar winner since 2017 except for Cillian Murphy, Jordan won the Oscar despite not winning the most Best Actor awards of the season. In fact, Murphy, Gary Oldman, Casey Affleck, DiCaprio, Daniel Day-Lewis, and Colin Firth are the only lead actors in the expanded era to win the most critics’ awards and the Oscar in the same season.
In that context, once Chalamet erased Jordan’s early precursor lead in midseason, he was doomed right then and there.
Timothée Chalamet’s Movies As A Whole Can’t Win Oscars Either
Chalamet’s recent personal Oscar losses have been headline-making and controversial enough. Yet, whether voters have a hardening resistance to voting for him or not, that sentiment seems to extend to the rest of his movies as well.
For the second year in a row, a Chalamet movie he was nominated for was completely blanked for wins, as “Marty Supreme’s” 0-for-9 Oscar night followed up the 0-for-8 performance of “A Complete Unknown” in 2024. For that matter, when one also includes “Dune: Part Two’s” gradual fade to two wins in 2024, the solo wins of “Call Me By Your Name” and “Little Women,” and the shut outs of “Lady Bird” and “Don’t Look Up,” every Best Picture nominee with Chalamet in it seems doomed to be among the big losers of their season – with the single exception being 2021’s “Dune’s” six craft wins.
Whatever issues voters have with Chalamet, it seems clear his movies won’t fare any better on Oscar night until he does.
The Screenplay Oscars Have Never Been More Lopsided
There have been years where one of the Screenplay Oscars has been a complete blowout, while the other makes up for it by being tight until the end. That was not the case in 2025, which may be the first time in recent memory that both Screenplay races were so lopsided.
Both “One Battle After Another” and “Sinners” became the first movies to win more than 40 critic and precursor awards for screenplay. Beyond that, no other Original or Adapted script won more than three prizes except “It Was Just an Accident,” and it stopped winning anything by midseason. It was one thing when “Conclave” thoroughly swept Best Adapted Screenplay last year, since the Best Original Screenplay contenders were still so close, yet there was never the pretense of suspense in either category this year.
Best Adapted Screenplay may be especially due for a close race in 2026, but having just one real Screenplay race at all next season would be enough of a change.
Sequels Have Hit The Skids With The Academy
As pundits already begin sussing out next year’s field and its preseason favorites, they should be extra careful about hyping up a few supposed contenders. Specifically, the recent history of sequels like “Joker: Folie a Deux,” “Gladiator II,” “Wicked: For Good,” and “Avatar: Fire and Ash” should caution everyone from having too much faith in the likes of “Dune: Part Three,” and “The Social Reckoning” next fall.
For two years running, pundits and fans assumed two sequels to past Oscar winners would be contenders too – just as many will assume “Dune: Part Three” will automatically continue that franchise’s Oscar track record, and that “The Social Reckoning” will live up to what “The Social Network” did in 2010. Even beyond these recent sequels falling short, the warning signs for this latest sequel duo are rather huge, between the very ominous premise of an unsupervised Aaron Sorkin both directing and writing a January 6-centered sequel without David Fincher, and what might happen if “Dune: Part Three” adapts the original novels’ wildest twists for the end of Paul Atreides’ story.
Nevertheless, all of us will either have to learn the hard way about supposedly locked in sequels again, or see the 2026 season turn out quite different from 2024 and 2025 in at least one big way. But the answers to that mystery, like all the others in 2026, are still many months from revealing themselves – and the signs and lessons of this now past season are all we have to cling to until then.
What were your big takeaways from the 2025-2026 awards season? How do you feel about how the season went down overall? What are you most looking forward to in 20206? Please let us know in the comments section below and on Next Best Picture’s X account, click here here for the final tally of awards season precursors, and here for Next Best Picture’s podcast reactions episode to the Oscars earlier this week.
You can follow Robert and hear more of his thoughts on the Oscars & Film on X @Robertdoc1984
