RIDICULOUSLY EARLY OSCAR NOMINATION PREDICTIONS - ACADEMY AWARDS 2020

​Hello, all! It’s a bit of a slow week this week with little news or new releases that other, more professional critics haven’t covered far more extensively than I can, but that doesn’t mean that The Friendly Film Fan doesn’t have some new content ready for all of you to feast your eyes on. Given the time of the year, and the fact that Oscar season has now begun, I thought I’d go ahead and release my way too early predictions list for what films could become Academy Award nominees come January. Before we get to that, however, a few pre-cursory notes: 1. It is unlikely that the Academy will actually nominate 10 movies for Best Picture to fill in all 10 slots; mathematically, the voting system for this category doesn’t really allow that as a possibility except on extremely rare occasions. There are 10 movies listed there because there are 10 slots, but one or two of those films will most likely not make the cut. 2. These are all pure guesses based on Oscar voting patterns, past ceremonies, marketing/trailers, and what knowledge I have of the films currently (crew, cast, reviews out of Telluride, TIFF, Venice, etc) – any of these could fall out of the race or shoot straight to the top, and there is a possibility come nomination time that well over half these films don’t get mentioned. I haven’t seen most of these yet, so we’ll have to wait and see how this all shakes out (I’ll be re-releasing the updated list once the year is over and we have a more clear playing field). 3. If a category does not include guesses for any or all nominees (i.e. if there are only one or two guesses in a category with five nomination slots), this is simply because I don’t yet have enough information to make the requisite amount of educated guesses in that category. This also means categories I don’t really know about, such as the Shorts categories, may not have any nominee guesses at all; these will be marked “TBD.” (Also, for Best Original Song, I don’t know any of the song names yet, so I only listed the films I thought they would be attached to.) With all that out of the way, here is the full list of my absurdly early predictions for which films will make up the nominees for the Oscars in 2020.

Best Picture:

• 1917
• A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
• Bombshell
• Ford v Ferrari
• The Irishman
• Just Mercy
• Marriage Story
• Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
• Parasite
• Waves

Best Director:

• Greta Gerwig, Little Women (2019)
• Bong Joon-ho, Parasite
• Martin Scorsese, The Irishman
• Trey Edward Shults, Waves
• Quentin Tarantino, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

Best Actor:

• Christian Bale, Ford v Ferrari
• Adam Driver, Marriage Story
• Michael B. Jordan, Just Mercy
• Joaquin Phoenix, Joker
• Adam Sandler, Uncut Gems

Best Actress:

• Cynthia Erivo, Harriet
• Scarlett Johansson, Marriage Story
• Lupita Nyong’o, Us
• Charlize Theron, Bombshell
• Renée Zellweger, Judy

Best Supporting Actor:

• Timothée Chalamet, Little Women (2019)
• Tom Hanks, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
• Shia LaBeouf, Honey Boy
• Joe Pesci, The Irishman
• Brad Pitt, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

Best Supporting Actress:

• Annette Bening, The Report
• Brie Larson, Just Mercy
• Margot Robbie, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
• Meryl Streep, Little Women (2019)
• Shuzhen Zhao, The Farewell

Best Animated Feature:

• Frozen II
• How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World
• Missing Link
• Toy Story 4
• Weathering With You

Best Foreign Language Film:

• Ash Is Purest White
• Pain and Glory
• Parasite
• Portrait of a Lady on Fire
• Tigers Are Not Afraid

Best Documentary Feature:

• Amazing Grace
• Apollo 11
• Hail Satan?
• Honeyland
• Knock Down the House

Best Cinematography:

• Roger Deakins, 1917
• Phedon Papamichael, Ford v. Ferrari
• Jörg Widmer, A Hidden Life
• Lawrence Sher, Joker
• Robert Richardson, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

Best Film Editing:

• Lee Smith, 1917
• Jon Poll, Bombshell
• Andrew Buckland, Michael McCusker, and Dirk Westervelt, Ford v Ferrari
• Jeff Groth, Joker
• Fred Raskin, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

Best Production Design:

• Dennis Gassner, 1917
• Francois Audouy, Ford v Ferrari
• Bob Shaw, The Irishman
• Mark Friedberg, Joker
• Barbara Ling, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

Best Costume Design:

• Colleen Atwood, Bombshell
• Mark Bridges, Joker
• Jacqueline Durran, Little Women (2019)
• Arianne Phillips, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
• Kym Barrett, Us

Best Makeup & Hairstyling:

• A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
• Bombshell
• Joker

Best Original Score:

• Marco Beltrami, Ford v Ferrari
• Alexandre Desplat, Little Women (2019)
• John Williams, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
• Randy Newman, Toy Story 4
• Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, Waves

Best Original Song:

• Cats
• Harriet
• Jojo Rabbit
• Judy
• Queen & Slim

Best Adapted Screenplay:

• Steve Zaillian, The Irishman
• Todd Phillips and Scott Silver, Joker
• Tom Edge, Judy
• Greta Gerwig, Little Women (2019)
• Edward Norton, Motherless Brooklyn

Best Original Screenplay:

• Lulu Wang, The Farewell
• Shia LaBeouf, Honey Boy
• Rian Johnson, Knives Out
• Noah Baumbach, Marriage Story
• Quentin Tarantino, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

Best Visual Effects:

• Ad Astra
• Avengers: Endgame
• Cats
• The Lion King (2019)
• Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

Best Sound Mixing:

• 1917
• Cats
• Ford v. Ferrari
• Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
• Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

Best Sound Editing:

• 1917
• Ad Astra
• Ford v. Ferrari
• Rocketman
• Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

Best Live-Action Short:

• TBD

Best Animated Short:

• Hair Love

Best Documentary Short:

• TBD

Are any of these sure bets to you? Which films do you think will end up vying for that gold statue in February? Let me know in the comments section below. Thanks for reading, and keep it here at The Friendly Film Fan for more News, Reviews, Rankings, and more!