Predicting the Best Picture Noms Based on their Distributor:

Warner Bros. - Dune Part 2: Shocker I know. But sometimes you just gotta go for the easy pick. And seeing as how the original Dune was also up for Best Picture and the sequel was not only more acclaimed, this is one of the safe bets for Best Picture. Now whether it goes on to win Best Picture and Best Director is up in the air. Traditional Oscar wisdom would say films that release around awards season are more heavily favored however we may start to see a trend away from that mindset seeing as how the two most recent winners - Everything Everywhere All At Once and Oppenheimer - both came out months before awards campaigning started and like with Dune Part 2, EEAAO came out in the spring and still managed to net the big awards. Either way, it'll be a very exciting campaign for Warner Bros. come December.

MGM - Challengers: This one shouldn't be a surprise either. A midbudget film being a wide-release and attracting a ton of acclaim, with an an equally revered director in Luca Guadagnino behind the wheel, and with all three actors getting acclaim for their roles, and MGM doens't have a lot of other available films and with this being their most high profile and acclaimed film in years, yeah this one is easy.

NEON - Anora AND The Seed of a Sacred Fig: So NEON is having a really great year. They're finally being recognized as a top indie distributor, they just had their biggest box office hit with Longlegs and for the first time in their very short history, I'm predicting they're going to do what A24 managed to do this year and get two of their distributed films nominated for Best Picture.

Anora is the big one of course given it won the Palme D'Or, with some heralding this as Sean Baker's magnum opus, people are also discussing if Mikey Madison can be up for Best Actress and no doubt they're going to mount a campaign for Sean Baker. But I think Seed of a Sacred Fig is getting a bit overshadowed, even though it was also up for the Palme D'Or and won every other award is was up for at Cannes, in fact it actually won more awards than Anora. It's always tricky seeing what foreign features will be up for International Feature, especially right now as no nation has announced their pick. But I could see Germany picking this to be their film and this film to be at least one non-English film up for best picture.

Searchlight - A Complete Unknown: Disney will have it a bit easier when it comes to deciding what movie to push for awards. Despite the acclaim Yorgos Lanthimos received for Poor Things, Kinds of Kindness' anthology structure may be too weird for the Academy, as does Nightbitch's out-there concept and genre. And while A Real Pain got a lot of buzz out of Sundance and I do think they'll push Kieran Culkin hard for Best Actor, sometimes you just gotta go with the safe music biopic. You've got the big talented actor attached in Timothee Chalamet, James Mangold in the director chair who's become a reliable joruneyman the same way Ron Howard was in the mid-90s to early-00s, even if this film is middling like Elvis and Bohemian Rhapsody were, if the film gets good enough reviews the Academy won't help feeling nostalgic for the music.

Focus Features - Dìdi: Perhaps one of the biggest stories out of Sundance this year was Sean Wang's directorial and semi-autobiographical film Didi. It's gotten a ton of acclaim since its premiere. And given Wang has actually already gotten Oscar attention for his biographical stories as his documentary short Nai Nai & Wài Pó getting an Oscar nom earlier this year, and also given how the Oscars love a solid coming-of-age pseudo-biographical film given Belfast, Lady Bird, Minari, Roma, and The Fabelmans, I think Wang will join a number of indie directors who's first feature wound up getting a Best Picture nomination.

Apple - Blitz: Regardless of the financial woes Apple continues to invest heavily in their movies and that include being attached to big prestiege films. And while Steve McQueen's last film Widows failed to garner even Actress nominations for its cast, I think this film's subject matter: tackling a group of London survivors amidst the WWII bombings, and including awards favorite Saoirse Ronan and rising star Harris Dickinson, perhaps they can even get a few more wins after Napoleon and Killers of the Flower Moon walked away winless.

A24 - Sing Sing: for once, A24 doesn't have that big indie film this year that's gotten people buzzing. Now this does not mean they haven't put out good films this year, but I don't really think Problemista, I Saw the TV Glow, or A Different Man being considered for the top prizes. Civil War might get a couple technical awards in Sound and Production but sadly don't think they'll campaign Kirsten Dunst for Best Actress. And maybe We Live in Time lives up to expectations but we'll have to see when it comes out in October. Sing Sing though on the other hand an inspirational and uplifting film, it has the big performance by Colman Domingo who is the favorite, and if all turns out well: it may even have the box office popularity to go alongside its acclaim. And since they don't have that many films on the docket to push, their campaign may even be stronger this year since they're not split with other films.

Netflix - Emilia Pérez: One of the biggest acquisitions at Cannes this year, Jacques Audiard's newest film has gotten a lot of critics buzzing. Audiard has always been a favorite with his breakout film Un Prophet getting a Best International Feature nominiation and Dheepan actually winning the Palme D'or back in 2015. His newest film made noise though when it's quadruple set of actresses wound up winning a tie for Best Actress, something that hasn't happened since Volver back in 2006 which also saw Penelope Cruz win her first Oscar. And while I could see Netflix going with a safer option (I even listed one below), I think given the acclaim this has gotten as well as the stacked cast that includes Selena Gomez and Zoe Saldana, I think it might be better to go with the artisier movie.

Lionsgates - Megalopolis: The road to Megalopolis has been a rocky one, with it being a passion project self-financed by Francis Ford Coppola, getting very divisive reviews when it premiered at Cannes, and it struggling to find distribution due to the critical response and its subject matter. That said, I don't think it'd be out of the realms for the Academy to recognize the film with big nominations out of sentimentality for FFC, especially since this is likely to be his last film ever as a director.

Universal - Wicked: Okay this may sound like a very weird pick but hear me out. The Oscars have a long history of recognizing nostalgic music and musicals although lately that's not really panned out. However given how long of a history Wicked has in also now being a nostalgic production the same way Les Miserables and West Side Story were, the talent involved in the production and in acting, and the potential box office success, this could be Universal's best shot at a Best Picture nominee assuming another film doensn't.

Other possible pushed films:

Focus Features - Conclave: This will be Focus Features' second option for Best Picture if Didi doesn't work out. And given it has Edward Berger as Director right after he got attention for All Quiet on the Western Front, and a cast that includes Ralph Fiennes, John Lithgow, and Stanley Tucci, it definitely looks like the stereotypical Oscar film. But we will see, as I'll state in another example, simply having acclaimed talent at the helm hasn't always meant Oscars and we've even seen previous films tackling religious subject matter from acclaimed directors in The Two Popes and Silence not garner Best Picture noms.

Netflix - The Piano Lesson: While Ma Rainey couldn't get another August Wilson movie a Best Picture nomination, it was a heavy favorite. And for this next film, getting Todd Black and Denzel Washington as producers again, as well as Virgil Williams who co-wrote Mudbound, and Alexandre Desplat to compose the score, that sounds like a solid time.

Warner Bros. - Joker: Folie a Deux: Superhero films getting nominations are few and far between and of the nine sequels that have been nominated for Best Picture, none of them were comic book movies. We'll have to see if Joker: Folie a Deux can recapture the magic that was the original Joker in 2019 but seeing as how Wakanda Forever couldn't get a BP nom after the first film did in 2018, this does seem more like a longshot. Although like Wakanda Forever, we could see an actress from the film be nominated as Lady Gaga makes her third play at a Best Actress Oscar playing Harley Quinn.

Paramount - Gladiator II: I feel like every year since The Martian, whenever Ridley Scott announces a new movie everyone automatically assumes it'll be a big awards contender...and then it comes out. All the Money in the World, The Last Duel, House of Gucci, Napoleon, all of them did get a couple of technicals but only ATMITW got a Best Supporting Actor nom for the late Christopher Plummer. Truthfully given Ridley Scott's filmography lately I don't believe this will live up to the hype but hey maybe we finally get a good Ridley Scott movie again?

A24 - We Live in Time: Much like with Conclave we have a talented cast in Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh as well as an acclaimed director as part of this movie, though is a bit unclear. John Crowley's last film, The Goldfinch, was a critical and commercial disaster, so we'll have to see if he can recapture the awards magic he had with Brooklyn.