As the calendar turns to a new year, the current awards season still appears ripe for surprises, twists, turns, and potential upsets, as it does every year. One of the places, though, that seems the least ripe for surprises and upsets is the top of the Best Picture ticket. Across basically every market (Next Best Picture, Award Expert, and many more), three films stand atop the Best Picture lineup: “One Battle After Another” squarely at the top, with many folks suggesting the Academy start engraving that Oscar already, followed next by “Sinners” and “Hamnet.” These three are pretty unanimously our season’s frontrunners, and the consensus shows them in that order with little exception.
While I do think these predictions do very accurately capture the state of the race, with these three being the most solid locks for Best Picture nominations (and an eventual win) going into January, these three films also stick out to me as being particularly unique as far as top contenders go: each of them has up to this point performed up to (or very close to) their realistic ceilings and really have not missed a beat or encountered a bump in the road on this Oscar campaign. The presence of the others and their inherent competition amongst them this season is essentially the only “knock” you could level on any of these films. Frankly, I have a really hard time remembering a season quite like it.
Let’s refresh our memory on each of these films as we rewind the season calendar. Back in the early summer, as we all looked onto an upcoming Oscar season that had hardly begun, one thing was already very specific: “Sinners” had burst onto the scene and was going to be a major player this Oscar season. Despite the narrative Variety wanted to tell, “Sinners” was released in April and became an international hit in a way that even Warner Brothers was likely unprepared for. It took a whole month for the film to dip below third place at the domestic box office (according to Box Office Mojo), and praise was heaped on it from many quarters. Ryan Coogler’s genre-bending vampire, southern semi-musical was an unexpected hit and quickly became a fixture in early-season Oscar predictions. Since the awards engine has started to turn, it has notched eye-popping results: eighteen Astra Award nominations, seventeen Critics’ Choice Award nominations, fourteen Satellite Award nominations, eight Oscar shortlist mentions (a max-out), seven Golden Globe nominations, and more — even extending to the Grammys. As someone personally not quite as hot on the film as others, I had my doubts after seeing it that “Sinners” was the real deal. Those doubts have been obliterated.
We talked and talked about “Sinners” as a frontrunner all summer before festival season — and that’s when “Hamnet” came along. It premiered at Telluride at the tail end of August to pretty exceptional reviews, and immediately, Chloe Zhao entered another Best Picture race. Jessie Buckley shot to the top of Best Actress predictions (where she remains in most cases to this day). It compounded the great Telluride reception by playing at TIFF the week after, where its buzz and awards-season bona fides grew further by winning the top prize, the People’s Choice Award. It was after that point that I (and I have to imagine others) placed it atop their Best Picture predictions even over “Sinners” for a while, because until then there had been basically no evidence at all to suggest otherwise — it had about as strong an opening as possible. Admittedly, in the months since early fall, the buzz has cooled, and box-office numbers weren’t super kind to it. But generally, if there’s an aspect the awards circuit can look past, especially with movies like this, it’s box office results (which will likely regain traction after awards ceremonies/nominations to come). It also received double-digit nominations at the Critics’ Choice Awards, six at the Golden Globes, and hit the three Oscars shortlists it was expected to. For a second there, “Hamnet” really was a genuine threat to “Sinners” at the top of the ticket.
That was short-lived, however. Less than two weeks after “Hamnet” took TIFF, the wide release of Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another” ushered in a new phase of the awards season. We’re honestly still in that phase, so to make a long story short, you’re hard-pressed today to find an Oscars predictor with “One Battle After Another” anywhere but the top spot in their Best Picture predictions in good faith, and if you do find one, they’ll likely admit to being a bit contrarian. The film has made an impressive $200M+ splash, tops many folks’ and publications’ Best-of-2025 lists, and looks poised to enter phase two of the Oscar season as a true juggernaut. If anything, it overperformed on the Oscars shortlists and has countless other accolades from the very same groups mentioned above for the other films. Since it burst onto the scene in late September, it has been the one to beat, and few appear to be in its way.
The season has taken on a distinct “Sinners“-to-“Hamnet“-to-“One Battle After Another” shape over the months, and each of these films has essentially bumped up against its respective ceiling in many ways. I think all three of these films have a strong “if it were any other year!” argument that they could each be formidable Best Picture winners. It is only because of the competition amongst themselves that they have hit meaningful friction.
Today, “Sinners” probably feels stronger than “Hamnet” as an across-the-board contender, and it looks very likely that many Oscar categories will come down to it and “One Battle After Another” duking it out (And all of this omits another high-profile contender, “Sentimental Value,” which, after a stellar Cannes debut, has stuck around formidably in the upper tier of Best Picture lists).
Looking at the state of the race today, it feels fairly unique to me in its very strong three-headedness — three films that have shown few signs of weakness at all. Especially in contrast to last Oscar season, which had us all shrugging about the inevitability of a Best Picture winner until the second weekend of February (when “Anora” finally solidified itself in pole position to stay), this season feels like the total opposite.
It’s usually the case that real Best Picture contenders have one or two reasons why they can’t win, and of course, some win despite it: Is “Anora” too small, or too raunchy? “The Brutalist” too long? “Everything Everywhere All at Once” too goofy? Is “The Power of the Dog” too chilly? Of course, juggernauts happen — “One Battle After Another” hopes to replicate what “Oppenheimer” did just a couple of years ago — but even then, they don’t usually have a bench of other films also punching above their weight just behind them like “Sinners” and “Hamnet.”
Our top three this year all enter the month of Oscar nominations extremely well-positioned and with very few reasons for any break in confidence, since they have excelled at essentially every important point this year. Again, their biggest worries are and have been each other, as they seem to be likely co-nominees by some combination in more categories than not.
This dynamic makes Oscar nominations in a few weeks all the more interesting. Should any of these films underperform even a bit, it will likely be one of the very first meaningful times they do so. And should they all meet or exceed already-high expectations, that will make every Oscar win amongst them even more impressive, since the competition is clearly very strong. “One Battle After Another” looks secure as a frontrunner, potentially rivaling the all-time nomination record of fourteen. “Sinners” looks to be meeting it toe-to-toe in many major categories and also coasting to double-digit nominations, and “Hamnet” could also potentially break that threshold with a particularly good showing on nomination morning.
From their flip-flops through the summer and early fall to what feels like inevitable Oscar competition the rest of this winter, these three films have been very fun to watch as an awards predictor this season. We have a real treat on our hands as we watch three films traverse the season essentially uninterrupted in their respective ascents, and we should take comfort in the fact that any nominations and wins at the Oscars amongst them will be hard fought and well-earned.
So, what do you think? What are you predicting to win Best Picture at the 98th Academy Awards? Please let us know your thoughts on our X account. Click here for more upcoming awards season dates, here for the most recent tally of awards season winners, here for our precursor tracker, and here for our current Oscar predictions.
You can follow Cole and hear more of his thoughts on the Oscars & Film on X @CurtissOnFilm
