Joey Magidson
Last week, I began my Year in Advance predictions by debuting my initial Best Picture slate. I’ll be slowly adding the rest of the above the line categories this week and throughout the month, with an update entailing those once completed. You can see my initial picks here and here, but today is about you all. For this Awards Radar Community Question, we’re asking about your choice. Folks, what is your Year in Advance Oscar pick for Best Picture?
Photo credit: Jonathan Olley
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If you’re on the same page as I am, let me know that you agree. Maybe you’re also going with Dune: Part Three right now? You could also be on the Project Hail Mary wagon, which would be an incredibly fun pick. There’s also the likes of The Odyssey and Wild Horse Nine, or things like The Adventures of Cliff Booth or Digger. I’m certainly not mad if you’re on the same page as I am, so if that’s the case, don’t be shy.
Perhaps you have a pick that I didn’t cite, either outside of my top ten, or a title that I didn’t mention at all? If so, that’s even more interesting to hear about, so I’m certainly intrigued by those options. Especially at this early stage, nothing is out of the question. I’m always in favor of telling a story with your predictions, especially early on, but you do you.
Now, the choice is yours. What is your Year in Advance prediction for Best Picture at the Oscars? Whatever the film you’re backing, it’s time to chime in and tell us all about it. Present your movie pick, explain why, and don’t be shy about starting the conversation. We’re all ears…
What is your Year in Advance pick for Best Picture at next year’s Academy Awards? Let us know!
What makes this tough to guess nowadays is that we’re not living in the 2000s, anymore. Or even the early 2010s. In the Before Time, we could just scan for the fanciest period drama or the most “inspiring”-looking release shepherded by Harvey Weinstein and that’d be a safe bet.
But we just saw an action comedy that literally introduced its main villain with a boner joke and seemingly pissed off both the left and the right of the partisan spectrum become the most recent Academy Award winner for Best Picture of 2025. It followed in the footsteps of a sexually-frank romantic dramedy centering a working-class stripper with a reverse-Disney Princess anti-fantasy as its narrative structure. The first-ever science fiction film to ever win the Academy’s top award made history within the last five years as well, and featured a scene where its kinda-sorta-villain (it’s complicated) bludgeons a man to death with two comically oversized dildos. I hated CODA and still do, but I can’t deny winning the Academy’s top prize as a streaming release that debuted at Sundance was an unprecedented achievement. And Nomadland? Totally out-of-the-ordinary Best Picture winner.
Oppenheimer is literally the only one from the 2020s so far that kinda sorta lines up with what people used to see as “Oscar bait.” And even then, it is not at all the kind of World War II-era historical biopic that would have ever been produced twenty years ago, and likely would have had a hard time even getting off the ground as a production but for the immense industry power wielded by its director.
So sure, why not predict Dune: Part Three as the early frontrunner? That would have been a silly thing to say as early as 2016. But now? It’s not at all a far-fetched notion. Project Hail Mary? Sure! We recently saw how the Academy reacts when a movie not based on some pre-baked franchise becomes a box office smash hit. An Anthony Bourdain biopic directed by the co-star of the webseries Nirvana the Band the Show? A sequel to Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood written but not directed by Quentin Tarantino? A movie from James Gray actually, finally getting mainstream awards recognition? It’s all on the table. No upcoming release is outside of their wheelhouse in this era.
Exactly. With all old rules, at least to some degree, out the window, it’s just about telling a story with your predictions. For me, at least at the moment, I’ll see where the whole “conclusion to an epic trilogy” thing takes us…