The first phase of one of the most unpredictable Oscar races in recent memory is coming to an end, which means it’s time for our final Oscar nomination predictions 2025. Front-runners have asserted themselves: We’ve seen Anora’s triumph at Cannes, Wicked’s box-office dominance, Emilia Pérez’s Golden Globes wins, and Conclave’s surprise TikTok takeover. Industry unions like the Screen Actors Guild and the Directors Guild have weighed in, further raising the profile of contenders like A Complete Unknown and The Brutalist, while critics have championed art house hits ranging from Nickel Boys to All We Imagine as Light.
Of course, tragic circumstances have also altered the awards-season landscape. Deadly, destructive wildfires blazed around Los Angeles just as Oscar nominations voting officially began, effectively shutting down campaigning a week early and leading the Academy to extend the window for returning ballots by two days—and delay the announcement of the nominees to Thursday, January 23.
With all of that chaos in mind, here’s what Vanity Fair’s Awards Insider team expects to happen on nominations morning, with Oscar nomination predictions 2025 in all 20 categories covering feature films. We’ll see you next Thursday morning to find out how right, or wrong, we were.
BEST PICTURE
Anora
The Brutalist
A Complete Unknown
Conclave
Dune: Part Two
Emilia Pérez
Nickel Boys
A Real Pain
Sing Sing
Wicked
About seven of these titles are likely sure things. We’re feeling less certain about Dune, Nickel Boys, and Sing Sing. It’s possible that Dune came out too early in the year, and Wicked already satisfies the itch to have a studio blockbuster in the lineup. Nickel Boys is critically beloved and has already won a raft of prizes, but it may be both too arty and too little-seen to land a nomination here. Sing Sing once looked like a lock, but it underperformed at the SAG nominations, giving us some reason to wonder if it’s losing steam. If one of those movies doesn’t make the cut, we’d probably swap in The Substance, which got a huge awards-season boost from Demi Moore’s poignant Golden Globes acceptance speech earlier this month. Gross-out body horror doesn’t have a great track record with the Academy, but The Substance concerns a topic pertinent to the industry, it has a fancy Cannes stamp on it, and its star is a likely front-runner for best actress. —Richard Lawson
BEST DIRECTOR
Jacques Audiard, Emilia Pérez
Sean Baker, Anora
Edward Berger, Conclave
Brady Corbet, The Brutalist
Coralie Fargeat, The Substance
At this point, I would say four of these slots have been locked. Sean Baker won the Palme d’Or way back in May for Anora, and has seemingly been on a smooth path to this nomination since. There have been some misses, but locking the DGA nomination this week feels like it solidified him there. Brady Corbet just won the directing prize at the Golden Globes, and actually got to give two acceptance speeches that night because The Brutalist also won for best drama. He has been on a roll since winning the directing prize in Venice in the fall. French auteur Jacques Audiard also won at the Globes (for best comedy or musical) and Emilia Pérez has really been picking up steam with Globes wins and other recent nominations. While Edward Berger hasn’t been winning as many precursors as the rest of this group, Conclave remains a universally loved film. All four of these directors landed DGA noms this week, which proves that they’re favorites of the directing branch since there is so much overlap.
So what to do with this fifth slot? In a surprise twist, A Complete Unknown’s director, James Mangold, took that final DGA slot. While that film’s star, Timothée Chalamet, has emerged as a strong Oscar contender, it has not been clear whether Mangold was getting that same treatment—but now we know other directors like that film. Denis Villeneuve was previously nominated by the DGA but missed a directing-Oscar nom for Dune: Part One, so it feels like a long shot that he’d make the Oscar list for Dune: Part Two. There’s a chance RaMell Ross could make the Oscar list for Nickel Boys, but that film remains divisive.
And though the DGA is very good at matching winners with the Oscars, its list of nominees almost never lines up exactly with the Oscar nominations. For the past several years, the Academy has chosen to include an exciting international director that the DGA ignored—like Drive My Car’s Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Another Round’s Thomas Vinterberg, Triangle of Sadness’s Ruben Östlund, and Anatomy of a Fall’s Justine Triet. That’s why I’m convinced they’ll give that last slot to this year’s most interesting new (well, new to most of them) director: Coralie Fargeat of The Substance. —Rebecca Ford
BEST ACTRESS
Cynthia Erivo, Wicked
Karla Sofía Gascón, Emilia Pérez
Mikey Madison, Anora
Demi Moore, The Substance
Fernanda Torres, I’m Still Here
What an incredibly competitive category this has turned out to be. In nearly equal parts, you’ve got Hollywood icons, breakout discoveries, and international thespians duking it out for what feels like an exceedingly small five slots—and that’s before we even get to Wicked, which is coming off of a dominant showing at the SAG Awards, with five nominations. While Ariana Grande generated the most awards attention out of the gate, Cynthia Erivo feels just as safe for a nomination at this point.