The Oscar Narrative: First 2026 Nomination Predictions - Best Picture

First 2026 Nomination Predictions

Avatar: Fire and Ash

Bugonia

Hamnet

Jay Kelly

Marty Supreme

One Battle After Another

Sentimental Value

Sinners

Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere

Wicked: For Good

Other Contenders - Rental Family, It Was Just an Accident, The Lost Bus, A House of Dynamite, Frankenstein, The Smashing Machine, After the Hunt, F1: The Movie, Is This Thing On?, The Ballad of the Small Player, The Secret Agent, Nouvelle Vague, Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, No Other Choice, Anemone, A Bold Beautiful Journey, The History of Sound, The Life of Chuck, Highest 2 Lowest, Ella McCay, The Phoenician Scheme, Weapons, 28 Years Later, The Ballad of Wallis Island, Black Bag, Bring Her Back, Eephus, Friendship, Materialists, Meeting with Pol Pot, Mickey 17, A Nice Indian Boy, On Becoming a Guinea Fowl, One of Them Days, Sacramento, Sorry, Baby, Thunderbolts*, Warfare, The Wedding Banquet

Commentary - A great race is shaping up, and tomorrow the Venice Film Festival starts! Within a few weeks, the race will really start to shape up. I am sticking with the franchises of Wicked and Avatar, although the diminishing returns for Avatar may finally knock it out of the competition. A bunch of big hitters are returning to the race including Noah Baumbach with Jay Kelly, Yorgos Lanthimos with Bugonia, Chloe Zhao with Hamnet, Paul Thomas Anderson with One Battle After Another, and if it can hold, Ryan Coogler with Sinners. Joachim Trier is hoping to build on his previous successes with Sentimental Value, which was a hit out of Cannes. A biopic is always in the mix, and Scott Cooper's Springsteen film might continue the streak. Finally, I put in Marty Supreme, because the buzz is getting really loud ahead of its festival premieres. Beyond that, Rental Family is getting a ton of buzz. A bunch of past Oscar success stories return like Guillermo Del Toro with Frankenstein, Paul Greengrass with The Lost Bus, Kathryn Bigelow with A House of Dynamite, and Bradley Cooper with Is This Thing On? The Smashing Machine could pit the Safdie Brothers against each other, Luca Guadagnino could return for After the Hunt, Knives Out could get in on its third try, and F1 could be the latest blockbuster to breakthrough. Also thinking about A Bold Beautiful Journey, Nouvelle Vague, The History of Sound, The Life of Chuck, The Phoenician Scheme, Mickey 17, Materialists, and a plethora of other great projects.