At the 98th Academy Awards, a momentous event will come to pass. For the first time in nearly 25 years (since the introduction of the Oscar for Best Animated Feature), a new category will debut at the Academy Awards: Best Casting. This has been a long time coming, given the integral role casting directors play in assembling the performers who make everyone’s favorite movies work as well as they do. Recognizing them in their own Oscar category is tremendously important, especially since it can also function as a way to shower praise on particularly excellent ensemble casts.
Given that this is a fresh new Oscar category, though, questions abound on how it’ll be executed. What will this category look like? What criteria will be used to judge the winners of this category? There’s so much uncertainty surrounding this exciting new domain in awards season that Next Best Picture is having trouble figuring out which precursors will be considered the most important when trying to predict this category. Do we consider only “Best Casting” awards, or do we assume voters may view this as an “Ensemble” category, and those precursors, whether intended or not, will also be important in shaping perceptions of this category and what it will recognize?
That is the big question lingering in the air: what kind of material will be judged regarding the new Best Casting Oscar? This area of the business involves assembling other actors to perform roles in a script; most of the time, it’s the secondary players or discovery casting choices in bit parts as opposed to the leads, as the director usually will have one-on-one meetings with actors they already have in mind for a particular main role. It’s a challenging and crucial task for the casting director to round out the director’s vision with the actors they already have in mind for the lead roles; however, it is also one that occurs during the pre-production phase. The intricacies of casting (organizing chemistry reads, scouting for the best possible person wherever they are, coordinating with directors, etc.) are processes that are not often in the public eye.
That could leave some Oscar voters scratching their heads on what to consider when voting for Best Casting. Take “One Battle After Another,” for instance. Will the Oscar be decided based on the performances of Chase Infiniti, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Teyana Taylor, or on the decisions to bring them together? Or is it both? Given that there is already a category for the individual actors, it should hopefully be clear that the Best Casting category is reserved for individuals like Cassandra Kulukundis, the casting director of “One Battle After Another,” and her significant contributions to the project in casting other roles, such as Paul Grimstad as Howard Sommerville or former security consultant James Raterman as Colonel Danvers.
As for the criteria of “who was cast well,” in determining the “winners” of this category, that’ll come down to individual subjective opinions of Oscar voters. There’s already plenty of subjectivity in determining Oscar winners; why should the Best Casting category be an exception? Suppose there are any qualities that voters should keep in mind when determining “quality” casting. In that case, it’s about discovering newer actors (like Infiniti in “One Battle After Another” or Miles Caton in “Sinners“) or inspired choices for roles that play against type for an actor (Dwayne Johnson in “The Smashing Machine“), or maybe it’s uncanny casting of the right actor for a real-life person (Guillaume Marbeck as Jean-Luc Godard in “Nouvelle Vague” or Jeremy Allen White in “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere“), or it’s an actor who leaves a lasting impression on the audience that didn’t quite expect (Leo Woodall in “Nuremberg“), or it’s casting people of color in traditionally white roles (“Hedda“), or replacing an actor at the 11th hour due to another actor dropping out (Jacob Elordi in “Frankenstein“), or none of this will even be considered and the Academy will just default to choosing the casts with the biggest names attached (“Jay Kelly” or “Wake Up Dead Man“).
It takes real imagination and insight to find just the right person for the right role, especially when those choices aren’t initially obvious picks for the part. Just look back at casting director Sarah Halley Finn insisting on Chris Pratt’s casting as Peter Quill/Star-Lord, even when James Gunn was initially against this casting notion. If Academy voters are looking for any kind of guide on what qualifies as “who was cast well,” start by thinking about the casting choices that wouldn’t have been conceptual slam-dunks.
Then there’s the Best Casting-related quandaries of how much directors influence casting in their own films. Filmmakers often work in tandem with casting directors, while directors and screenwriters have frequently had specific ideas in mind for who should play lead roles. The terrific working relationships between filmmakers and casting directors are well worth talking about. However, it shouldn’t distract from giving casting directors their own category and recognizing their tremendous contributions to individual pieces of cinema. After all, every aspect of the filmmaking process is a collaborative process, that’s not just reserved for casting.
Even the biggest actors get a major boost in their prowess through sublime editing (which ensures the best takes make it to the big screen) or cinematography that guarantees superb imagery, enhancing their performances. Screenwriters have their works translated to the screen by a team of artists, ranging from the director to the editor. Composers collaborate with a diverse range of musicians and the film’s sound team to bring the film’s score to life. There simply isn’t just one person responsible for why you like a movie.
However, there is often a central person who helps to arrange things and provide extra bursts of creativity, serving as the band leader of these departments. The screenwriter is the one who puts fingers on laptop keys to bring a story to life. The composer is the only one who can envision music perfect for the film. Casting directors, similarly, have rich experiences and visions that prove essential to filling out a movie’s casting. It’s really a no-brainer for the Best Casting Oscar to only go to the casting directors, especially when actors don’t have to share Best Actress or Supporting Actor statues with editors and camera operators. So, the idea that Directors may also receive the award alongside their casting director is something that will need to be analyzed on a case-by-case basis.
All these uncertain elements attached to the Best Casting Oscar may sound daunting to some voters. However, they mostly reflect the exciting and rich possibilities encased in recognizing a pivotal job in moviemaking at the Oscars. There’s uncertainty here, but after a year or two of handing out the award, norms will get established. It’ll soon feel like second nature for how the Best Casting Oscar operates. Future generations will be flabbergasted to hear that there was ever a time when this category didn’t exist.
In the process, hopefully, a slew of names in the casting director world will become household names to Oscar pundits, viewers, and voters. Given all that people in this field have contributed to cinema, they’re well overdue for their time in the sun. The current suspense (which could pave the way for exciting new Oscar standards) over certain aspects of how the Best Casting Oscar will be judged and rewarded shouldn’t dilute the excitement of the moment in Academy Awards history.
The Next Best Picture team is currently predicting these films to be in the hunt for the first ever Best Casting Oscar:
1. Francine Maisler (SINNERS)
2. Cassandra Kulukundis (ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER)
3. Tiffany Little Canfield & Bernard Telsey (WICKED: FOR GOOD)
4. Jennifer Venditti (MARTY SUPREME)
5. Bret Howe & Mary Vernieu (WAKE UP DEAD MAN: A KNIVES OUT MYSTERY)
6. Douglas Aibel & Nina Gold (JAY KELLY)
7. Yngvill Kolset Haga & Avy Kaufman (SENTIMENTAL VALUE)
8. Francine Maisler (SPRINGSTEEN: DELIVER ME FROM NOWHERE)
9. Robin D. Cook (FRANKENSTEIN)
10. Nina Gold (HAMNET)
How do you think the new Best Casting Oscar will be judged? What are you predicting to be the first winner? 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.
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