 The Friendly Film Fan Predicts the Field for the 2027 Academy Awards By Jacob Barlow-Jones Hello all, and welcome back to The Friendly Film Fan! September is finally here, which means the fall festivals are starting up and the awards campaigns (plus the discourse that inevitably comes with them) are nigh. While a few big-ticket films such as Project Hail Mary and The Odyssey have already opened nationwide and are sure to rack up a wealth of nominations across most categories, many Oscar hopefuls are still set to debut on this year’s festival circuit. Danny Boyle’s Ink, as well as Lance Oppenheim’s Primetime, have both opened to positive reviews, the Telluride lineup is as stacked as ever with Wild Horse Nine and The Debut making waves over the past week, and – as a last-minute surprise – Luca Guadagnino’s Sam Altman biopic Artificial was announced as joining this year’s New York Film Festival alongside previously known hopefuls like Tony Gilroy’s Behemoth! This is also the time of the year when many studios are set to release the films they acquired out of early-year festivals – such as Sundance and Cannes – to the public in order to get more eyes on them before their awards campaigns ramp up. So little is known about the race to this point, and with so much possibility in the air for things to change radically between now and January, it’s an exciting time to be a movie fan. For myself, there are two big question marks hanging over the season as a whole: how much – if at all – will the Academy embrace Obsession beyond Inde Navarette’s star-making performance, and perhaps even more importantly for most of us who engage in these prediction spaces: will Digger be any good? The former question seems to have its answer in last year’s Weapons, for which Amy Madigan took home the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress; Navarette is running in Lead Actress this year, so the stakes are a bit higher, but it’s also a less crowded field than Supporting right now, so a nomination for her seems likely, though a win could present a more challenging road ahead. As far as the latter question, it’s anybody’s guess right now; Alejandro G. Iñárittu’s particular stylings are not always to the Academy’s tastes (see: Bardo), and usually less so for many film critics, but with Tom Cruise also backing the project as his big return to non-franchise acting, and the Academy’s love for big satirical comedies about climate change and environmental collapse even when they’re not entirely worthy of all that praise (see: Don’t Look Up), it could still be one of the year’s major steamrollers come nomination time. There are also a few smaller questions vis-à-vis category eligibility for some films – like whether Behemoth! can even make Original Score with nine composers on the soundtrack, or whether Searchlight will choose to run Sam Rockwell as a co-lead or supporting for Wild Horse Nine – but most of that is likely to be answered in a few weeks once the logistics of the campaigns have been thoroughly worked out, so for now, I’ve just placed them where I think they would go with the field as it currently stands. I’m sure absolutely none of this will change over the next six months and that people will behave very normally about whatever does or doesn’t make the cut in January. Here, for the first time this year, are my ridiculously early Oscar nomination predictions (minus the shorts cause there’s just no way to track those this early)! BEST PICTURE Predicted Nominees:
BEST DIRECTOR Predicted Nominees:
BEST ACTRESS Predicted Nominees:
BEST ACTOR Predicted Nominees
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS Predicted Nominees:
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR Predicted Nominees:
BEST CASTING Predicted Nominees:
BEST ANIMATED FEATURE Predicted Nominees:
BEST INTERNATIONAL FEATURE FILM Predicted Nominees:
BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE Predicted Nominees:
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY Predicted Nominees:
BEST FILM EDITING Predicted Nominees:
BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN Predicted Nominees:
BEST COSTUME DESIGN Predicted Nominees:
BEST MAKEUP & HAIRSTYLING Predicted Nominees:
BEST ORIGINAL SCORE Predicted Nominees:
BEST ORIGINAL SONG Predicted Nominees:
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY Predicted Nominees:
BEST ORIGNAL SCREENPLAY Predicted Nominees:
BEST VISUAL EFFECTS Predicted Nominees:
BEST SOUND Predicted Nominees:
What do you think of these predictions? Are there any you feel are way off? Anything flying under the radar you think could pull off a major surprise? Let me know in the comments section below, and thanks for reading!
- The Friendly Film Fan
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