What Would An “Alternate” Academy Award Nominations Lineup Have Looked Like This Year?

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to a fun little exercise that I like to do each year. A day or two after the Academy Award nominees are announced, I like to look at what the alternate version of the nominations would be. Imagine a Best Actor race that includes Zac Efron for The Iron Claw, as just one example. Or, what about any of the below the line categories. Mostly, this just something fun to do the day after the agony and the ecstasy of the Oscar nominations. Here, Saltburn isn’t shut out, nor did Greta Gerwig miss in Best Director for Barbie. Read on for my various other examples below!

Like last year, the year before, as well as the year prior, I want to explain this a little bit more. What you’re going to see is how the Oscar nominations would look in an alternate universe. Essentially, if you remove the actual nominees from each Academy Award category, what would it look like? Would any categories look better? In most years, the answer is usually yes. This year, however? I actually think the Academy largely made the right calls. You can see next and decide for yourself…

Here we go…the “alternate” Academy Award nominees:

BEST PICTURE

1. Nyad
2. May December
3. Saltburn
4. Napoleon
5. The Color Purple
6. Rustin
7. The Iron Claw
8. Air
9. All of Us Strangers
10. Origin

BEST DIRECTOR

1. Greta Gerwig – Barbie
2. Alexander Payne – The Holdovers
3. Bradley Cooper – Maestro
4. Celine Song – Past Lives
5. Cord Jefferson – American Fiction

BEST ACTOR

1. Leonardo DiCaprio – Killers of the Flower Moon
2. Andrew Scott – All of Us Strangers
3. Zac Efron – The Iron Claw
4. Barry Keoghan – Saltburn
5. Christian Friedel – The Zone of Interest

BEST ACTRESS

1. Margot Robbie – Barbie
2. Greta Lee – Past Lives
3. Natalie Portman – May December
4. Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor – Origin
5. Fantasia Barrino – The Color Purple

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

1. Charles Melton – May December
2. Willem Dafoe – Poor Things
3. Dominic Sessa – The Holdovers
4. Glenn Howerton – BlackBerry
5. Colman Domingo – The Color Purple

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

1. Julianne Moore – May December
2. Sandra Hüller – The Zone of Interest
3. Rosamund Pike – Saltburn
4. Viola Davis – Air
5. Penélope Cruz – Ferrari

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

1. Saltburn
2. Air
3. Napoleon
4. The Iron Claw
5. The Boy and the Heron

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

1. Killers of the Flower Moon
2. All of Us Strangers
3. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
4. Origin
5. The Color Purple

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE

1. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem
2. Suzume
3. Wish
4. The Super Mario Bros. Movie
5. Migration

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN

1. Maestro
2. Saltburn
3. The Color Purple
4. Ferrari
5. Asteroid City

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

1. The Holdovers
2. Saltburn
3. Barbie
4. The Zone of Interest
5. The Iron Claw

BEST COSTUME DESIGN

1. Maestro
2. Saltburn
3. The Color Purple
4. The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes
5. Ferrari

BEST FILM EDITING

1. Barbie
2. Maestro
3. Air
4. The Iron Claw
5. American Fiction

BEST MAKEUP & HAIRSTYLING

1. Napoleon
2. Killers of the Flower Moon
3. Ferrari
4. The Last Voyage of the Demeter
5. Beau is Afraid

BEST SOUND

1. Barbie
2. Ferrari
3. Killers of the Flower Moon
4. The Killer
5. Napoleon

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS

1. Poor Things
2. Society of the Snow
3. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
4. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
5. Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE

1. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
2. Society of the Snow
3. Barbie
4. The Zone of Interest
5. The Boy and the Heron

BEST ORIGINAL SONG

1. Barbie (Dance the Night Away)
2. Rustin (Road to Freedom)
3. Flora and Son (High Life)
4. Flora and Son (Meet in the Middle)
5. The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (Can’t Catch Me Now)

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE

1. Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie
2. American Symphony
3. 32 Sounds
4. Beyond Utopia
5. Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project

BEST INTERNATIONAL FEATURE

1. The Taste of Things
2. Fallen Leaves
3. 20 Days in Mariupol
4. Four Daughters
5. Totem

Let us know what you think of the “alternate” Academy Award nominations in the comments!