The aftershocks of the Critics’ Choice and Golden Globes results, along with the nominations for SAG, PGA, DGA, and the BAFTA longlists, have shattered everything we assumed about the Best Picture bubble. Yet with mere days until the Oscar nominations, we are looking for any clues about whether “It Was Just an Accident,” “The Secret Agent,” “F1,” “Weapons,” or maybe a left-field film like “Blue Moon” can get the final Best Picture slots. However, the carnage of the last few days has revealed that maybe another race for a final above-the-line slot is where our answer will come from.
For most of the season, Best Original Screenplay has been a static race, with “Sinners,” “Sentimental Value,” “Marty Supreme,” and “It Was Just an Accident” presumed locked into four spots, and a bunch of lower-ranked contenders fighting for just one available slot. The assumption most of the year was that the industry would rescue “Jay Kelly” and put it in, but its complete flameout has put everything back at square one. Yet with the dust settling, the strongest contenders for the last Original nomination are now among the strongest contenders for the last Best Picture nomination.
“Blue Moon,” “Weapons,” and “The Secret Agent” are all among the last films with a remote shot at the final Original Screenplay nomination, and they all have the same potential Best Picture package they can complete with it. If “Blue Moon’s” Ethan Hawke, “Weapons’s” Amy Madigan, and “The Secret Agent’s” Wagner Moura are all still in line to get acting nominations, then one of them getting an extra above-the line nomination in Original Screenplay could be the final piece they need to reach Best Picture, even if their options elsewhere are limited or non-existent.
“The Secret Agent” is still win-competitive if not outright favored in Best International Film, whereas “Blue Moon” and “Weapons” have no other prospects beyond their screenplays and their one standout actor, so that would seem to be a very big edge. And as so many will point out, if Brazil could get “I’m Still Here” into Best Picture last year with just an acting and International Film nomination only, “The Secret Agent” can easily do the same, even if it misses Best Original Screenplay.
Yet if “It Was Just an Accident” survives its recent setbacks to salvage its own Best Picture nomination, then voters must decide if they really want NEON to get three films in after all. If they ultimately don’t and there’s only room for two NEON films overall, then “The Secret Agent” could use the extra Best Original Screenplay nomination to give its final resume a boost. However, it has barely shown up in precursors for that category, except for getting onto the BAFTA longlist.
If there won’t be three NEON films in Best Picture, the newfound thinking in light of recent events is that “It Was Just an Accident” will be the No. 3-ranked NEON film that misses instead. In fact, maybe it has gotten to the point where it has dropped off so significantly that some will predict even its seemingly locked Best Original Screenplay nomination isn’t safe anymore. While it has won the second-most Original Screenplay precursors this season, it won most of those very early, before “Sinners” started sweeping the category.
At the least, if there is a shocking miss for “It Was Just an Accident” in Best Original Screenplay, that will answer its fate right then and there. But on the still 95% likely chance it does make it in, that will keep it somewhat alive until Best Picture is read, at the minimum. Technically, that kind of puts it in the exact same boat as “Blue Moon” and “Weapons,” which also need a Best Original Screenplay mention to have still any hopes left when Best Picture is announced, and which both have reasons to be hopeful and fearful for their chances in each category as well.
Sony Pictures Classics has long been feared for its last-minute campaign magic, although it’s usually been used for internationally favored films like “I’m Still Here” and “The Father” instead of the very American/Broadway-based “Blue Moon.” But as long as Hawke is fully secured into Best Actor, the screenplay and all its dialogue-driven set pieces could ride his coattails in too, even without director/multi-Oscar nominee Richard Linklater having written it. With that extra nomination, “Blue Moon” would have a lot more momentum than most anything else that’s still left, or has fallen out of, the Best Picture running.
With the total collapse of the likes of “Jay Kelly,” “Wicked: For Good,” “Avatar: Fire and Ash,” and others, the Best Picture bubble is in such tatters that something like “Blue Moon” is still hanging around by sheer default. So is “Weapons,” as it turns out, which was long assumed to have used up all its strength just to get Madigan a nomination, if not an outright win. But between its PGA nomination, Madigan’s early precursor dominance, and how it has lingered in the Best Original Screenplay hunt too, maybe there is room for it to do more after all.
It has long been feared that, since the WGA nominations come out after the Oscar screenplay nominations this year, it will be impossible to predict both. But thanks to so many films being ruled ineligible for WGA, including “It Was Just an Accident, “Blue Moon,” and “The Secret Agent,” it is actually very easy to assume “Weapons” will get a WGA nomination as a result. So if we can assume that “Weapons” – unlike its main competition – would have had extra WGA momentum going in if those nominations had come out first, that, along with its other recent surges, paints a very favorable picture.
As a much bigger film than “Blue Moon,” and as a film which may have a more win-competitive acting nominee even after Madigan lost the Golden Globe, it might give “Weapons” the edge for the final Original Screenplay nomination – and therefore the edge that gets it the final Best Picture nomination too. But all that is presumed on getting the Original Screenplay nomination first, as is the case for “Blue Moon” and maybe “The Secret Agent” too. And that means Best Original Screenplay, which will be one of the first categories read on Oscar nomination morning, may wind up giving away the final Best Picture results very early on.
Yet this is based on the presumption that either “Blue Moon,” “Weapons,” or “The Secret Agent” will be the final Best Original Screenplay nominee – and there may well be precedence to think they all get snubbed.
Every year in the expanded era, except for 2021, there has been a film that gets a Screenplay nomination and absolutely nothing else. However, in an all but locked Adapted field filled with all but locked Best Picture nominees like “One Battle After Another,” “Hamnet,” “Frankenstein,” “Bugonia” and “Train Dreams,” and in an Original field where “Sinners,” “Sentimental Value” and “Marty Supreme” are locked and “It Was Just an Accident” will at least have another nomination for Best International Film, there is a very real chance there will be no lone Screenplay nominees this year – especially if “Blue Moon,” “Weapons,” or “The Secret Agent” gets the last Original nomination.
If that still seems rather improbable, then the only chance for at least one lone Screenplay nominee is one that beats out the Best Picture bubble films in Original, like “Sorry, Baby” or maybe even the seemingly dead “Jay Kelly” at this rate. Should that happen, it will at least knock “Blue Moon” and “Weapons” out of the Best Picture running as a result, and reduce them to films with just one lone acting nominee after all. At least, maybe that benefits “The Secret Agent” as well, even if it misses here too.
If neither “Blue Moon” nor “Weapons” gets into Best Original Screenplay, it may not reveal who will get the last Best Picture nomination on its own, but it will reduce the field enough to make a more educated guess. In that scenario, both “The Secret Agent” and “It Was Just an Accident” might be in the clear after all, or “F1” is the last film left that can knock one of them out, mostly because so many other contenders have fallen off.
It’s still possible that even if “Blue Moon” or “Weapons” gets into Best Original Screenplay, it won’t put either of them into Best Picture. This would either be because both “The Secret Agent” and “It Was Just an Accident” will still survive on the rest of their packages, or “F1” will use its tech nominations and recent PGA nomination to get the last spot, no matter what happens elsewhere.
Then again, considering how volatile the Best Picture field has become beyond the top two and the top five, it is hard to imagine this is the kind of year where the PGA would get 9/10 right, which would also spell trouble for “Weapons” too. And while Warner Bros only released “F1” in theaters with Apple and wasn’t as involved with it as it was with “Sinners” and “One Battle After Another,” “F1” getting in would still arguably mean it gets three films in. If enough voters honestly don’t want to give that much to NEON, giving that much to Warner Bros’ associated films anyway doesn’t feel right.
Either way, “F1’s” case will ride on how many tech nominations it can max out, whereas its competition has to pin their hopes on one category or bust. For “Blue Moon,” “Weapons,” and maybe “The Secret Agent” and “It Was Just an Accident,” that category happens to be Best Original Screenplay – the first of two major fields where they are all bunched together trying to force their way in. Once we know early on Oscar nomination morning which of them does it in Best Original Screenplay, if any of them, then it may be the last thing that tells us who gets the last spot in the biggest field of all.
What do you think is going to be nominated for Best Picture at this year’s Academy Awards? What do you think is going to be nominated for Best Original Screenplay at this year’s Academy Awards? Please let us know in the comments section below and on Next Best Picture’s X account, click here here for the most recent tally of awards season winners, here for Next Best Picture’s precursor tracker, and here for their current Oscar predictions.
You can follow Robert and hear more of his thoughts on the Oscars & Film on X @Robertdoc1984
