Our Final Predictions for The 98th Academy Awards!

After what seems like forever, the last stretch of a very long awards season will finally come to an end. On March 15th, the Oscars will commence and we can finally put the heated races and made-up campaign controversies behind us. The 98th Academy Awards is really a tale of two films, One Battle After Another and Sinners. Both films have some of the highest nominations across all categories, including all above the line, with the latter holding a record-breaking 16 nominations. While there’s always room for some upsets, the precursor landscape points not to whether or not the two films will win, but how MANY golden statues each will take up.

We’ve had months to twist ourselves in knots about who will win what, and prognosticators and pundits have probably had too much time to overanalyze each and every category. Personally, I think things are way more fun with a shorter season, but we can’t do anything about that now. With Hollywood’s biggest night on the horizon, the team has submitted some of their own predictions for winners in the largest categories. With so many to choose from, we’re going to limit our predicted winners to just 7 categories: Best Picture, Best International Feature, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress, and Best Director. and a Wild Card pick just to spice things up!

This year, I’m going to be picking on vibes. No predicting, all “hopedicting”. Sure, it sets you up for some pretty devastating losses come Oscar Night. But it’s also way more fun to pick with your heart and do away with the maths and precursor data. So let’s get into our predictions!

Best Director

Quite possibly the most heated race in this category in a long time, Best Director sees Paul Thomas Anderson and Ryan Coogler poised to win their first Oscar for directing. There’s a big potential for a Director/Picture split here, something that doesn’t happen at the Academy Awards often. The Nominees are: Chloe Zhao for Hamnet, Joachim Trier for Sentimental Value, Josh Safdie for Marty Supreme, Paul Thomas Anderson for One Battle After Another and Ryan Coogler for Sinners. Let’s see what the team thinks!

• Hunter Bolding – Ryan Coogler for Sinners
• Jeff Ewing – Paul Thomas Anderson for One Battle After Another
• Derrick Murray – Paul Thomas Anderson for One Battle After Another

Best Actor

Easily one of the most stacked Actor lineups we’ve had at the Oscars in a long time, the Best Actor category is kind of a bloodbath. This is usually reserved for Best Actress (which we will get to here shortly) but the men are out to win this year! I personally love all of these performances, and while I do have a frontrunner I don’t think I would be upset with any one of these actors winning. It’s a who’s who of leading men, and almost all of them have won at least once in a precursor which only makes the race all the more complicated. The Nominees are: Michael B. Jordan for Sinners, Wagner Moura for The Secret Agent, Ethan Hawke for Blue Moon, Leonardo DiCaprio for One Battle After Another, and Timothée Chalamet for Marty Supreme. Here’s who we think is gonna take this one!

• Derrick Murray – Michael B. Jordan for Sinners (which is kind of crazy because I’m not actually that high on him as a performer and didn’t have him winning until he won at the Actors Awards. Now I think it would be the coolest thing the Academy can do, and the Oscars is always desperate to be cool).
• Jeff Ewing – Michael B. Jordan for Sinners
• Hunter Bolding – Wagner Moura for The Secret Agent

Best Actress

A category has never been more locked. Actress is usually one of the hardest categories to predict, with the leading women giving some of the best performances of the year and making predictions nearly impossible. This race, however, has been decided for months. Jessie Buckley has not lost a single precursor in the entire race, collecting nearly every single award and statue available prior to the Academy Awards. It’s foolish to think that anyone else could win, and while there is always a dark horse potential upset this is Buckley’s to lose. There was one major snub here, and that’s the complete erasure of Amanda Seyfried for The Testament of Ann Lee. Her being absent here is pretty egregious in my opinion, and I just have to go on record and say she’s the only one who could’ve given Buckley a fair run for her money! The Nominees are: Jessie Buckley for Hamnet, Rose Byrne for If I Had Legs I Would Kick You, Kate Hudson for Song Sung Blue, Emma Stone for Bugonia, and Renate Reinsve for Sentimental Value.

• It’s unanimous! Derrick Murray, Jeff Ewing, and Hunter Bolding all pick Jessie Buckley for Hamnet!

Best Supporting Actor

Another crazy race, Best Supporting Actor is filled with uncertainty. It is another category wear almost all of the precursors have split the votes throughout the season, with only Sean Penn winning two early awards. I’d argue there’s some category fraud going on with Stellan Skarsgård who should be in the Lead Actor race instead of supporting. I understand why he’s not, but that’s still the best place for his performance. This is another category where I love every performance in the running would be perfectly happy with any winner. The Nominees are: Stellan Skarsgård for Sentimental Value, Sean Penn for One Battle After Another, Benicio del Toro for One Battle After Another, Delroy Lindo for Sinners, and Jacob Elordi for Frankenstein.

• Hunter Bolding – Sean Penn for One Battle After Another (but wants Delroy Lindo to win)
• Derrick Murray – Delroy Lindo for Sinners (hopedicting, not predicting here)
• Jeff Ewing – Jacob Elordi for Frankenstein (he gets one long shot!)

Best Supporting Actress

The Oscars are the most fun when there is chaos, and nothing is more chaotic than Best Supporting Actress. Shocking nominees, split awards in every precursor, and constant momentum shifts make for an exciting time for prognosticators. Up until now I’ve felt pretty good about my heart picks, all presented with strong backups that will most likely be the winner. But here, I have no idea what to do or what will happen, and that makes The Academy Awards so much fun. The Nominees are: Elle Fanning for Sentimental Value, Amy Madigan for Weapons, Wunmi Wosaku for Sinners, Teyana Taylor for One Battle After Another, and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas for Sentimental Value.

• And it’s unanimous AGAIN! Hunter Bolding, Jeff Ewing, and Derrick Murray all pick Amy Madigan for Weapons! This would honestly be the coolest the Academy could do, and we know how desperately the Academy wants to be cool. Do it, guys. Make the Oscars Fun Again!

Best International Feature

With Neon being the new premiere distributor for International cinema and basically snagging every major film out of the festivals, The International Feature race has become one of the most hotly contested categories of the evening. Personally I think this is a category that needs some major overhauls – expanded nominees, multiple film submissions for shortlists, country of origin inclusion etc – but that’s a whole different essay. This category was absolutely stacked, and the most snubs come from this list. Films like No Other Choice, My Father’s Shadow, Kokuho, and The President’s Cake to name a few are all noticeably missing here. But we can only choose from what is nominated, so let’s see what the team thinks! The nominees are: It Was Just An Accident, The Secret Agent, The Voice Hind Rajab, Sirat, and Sentimental Value.

• Hunter Bolding – The Secret Agent
• Jeff Ewing – The Voice of Hind Rajab
• Derrick Murray – It Was Just Accident (this is my heart pick, the actual winner will most likely be Sentimental Value)

Best Picture

And we’ve come to the crowned jewel of the awards, The Best Picture race. Always hotly contested and even with 10 nominees the list of films that should be here instead of F1 is a mile long. Like most of the above the line categories this year, it really comes down to two films: Sinners vs One Battle After Another. There really is no other choice (which is absent from the lineup but should be) for a winner as these two are the very clear frontrunners and are laps and laps ahead of their competitors. So the question isn’t which of the nominees will win, but rather which of these two will take home the gold. The nominees are: The Secret Agent, Marty Supreme, F1, Frankenstein, Bugonia, Train Dreams, Sinners, One Battle After Another, Hamnet, and Sentimental Value.

• In a shocking reveal, it is unanimous AGAIN! All 3 team members have predicted that Sinners will be the Best Picture winner!

Wild Card

For our final predictions, we asked the team to choose a category that interests them and wanted to highlight. There’s plenty to choose from and a lot more interesting races outside of the big above the line categories. Let’s take a look at some personal category choices from our team!

• Hunter Bolding – Selected both writing categories as their picks. He is predicting One Battle After Another for Best Adapted Screenplay and Sinners for Best Original Screenplay. This is a consensus split among Oscar pundits, many of whom believe that this is how the writing categories will ultimately shake out.

• Jeff Ewing – Selected Best Animated Feature, another category similar to Best Actress where winner is all but decided and the lead up is just a formality. Jeff predicts that Kpop Demon Hunters will win, which is kind of the only choice to make here. It was a rather weak year for animation, and while I personally would love to see an underdog like Little Amelie or The Character Rain pull a Flow this year, I think this one is all but locked.

• Derrick Murray – I never really watch the short program, but with such a long season and having seem every feature film nominated already, I found myself digging through the shorts. My wildcard selection is Live Action Short Film, and my heart pick is The Singers. I think Two People Exchanging Saliva is the most deserving and will most likely take it, but The Singers (on Netflix) stirred something in my soul and added much needed joy into a world increasingly less joyful. As a former choir kid, The Singers was made for me.

So there you have it! Our predictions for the 98th Academy Awards! What are some of your predictions for awards night?

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