It’s shaping up to be a big, slightly surreal Oscar morning for Warner Bros. Even as the studio finds itself at the centre of takeover chatter, two of its films — Sinners and One Battle After Another — are
being widely tipped to storm this year’s Academy Award nominations when the list is unveiled on Thursday.
Industry watchers expect both films to score double-digit nominations, spanning major categories such as best picture, acting honours and the newly introduced best casting award. The prospect of one studio leading the race with two clear frontrunners is rare — and all the more striking given that this could be Warner Bros’ final year operating as an independent distributor.
The studio is currently the subject of a fierce bidding battle involving Paramount Skydance and Netflix. Yet, despite the financial and corporate uncertainty surrounding parent company Warner Bros Discovery, the film division has enjoyed a standout year by backing original, director-driven projects rather than relying on sequels.
One of those bets is Sinners, a blues-soaked period horror film set in the segregated American South and directed by Black Panther filmmaker Ryan Coogler. The film follows twin brothers in 1930s Mississippi as they confront both vampires and entrenched racism. Michael B. Jordan, who plays the dual role, is widely expected to secure a best actor nomination, alongside strong chances in categories ranging from screenplay to original score.
According to Variety awards expert Clayton Davis, Sinners could even threaten the all-time record for most Oscar nominations by a single film — currently 14, held by All About Eve, Titanic and La La Land. Coogler, Davis wrote, is “rewriting the math entirely,” and could enter “a statistical stratosphere no filmmaker has ever touched.”
Running neck and neck with Sinners is One Battle After Another, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. The film, a wildly unconventional thriller, centres on a retired revolutionary searching for his teenage daughter amid a chaotic landscape of radical violence, immigration raids and white supremacists. It has already dominated the awards circuit so far, breaking the actors guild’s all-time nominations record.
Leonardo DiCaprio, who previously won the best actor Oscar, is considered almost certain to earn his seventh Academy Award acting nomination for the film.
Netflix, meanwhile, is expected to remain a strong presence in the race, with contenders including Guillermo del Toro’s monster drama Frankenstein, Western pioneer tragedy Train Dreams, and animated musical hit KPop Demon Hunters. Paramount, by contrast, appears to have a relatively thin awards slate this year.
Elsewhere, Hamnet, a literary adaptation imagining William Shakespeare grappling with the death of his son, is predicted to collect multiple nominations. Jessie Buckley, who plays Shakespeare’s wife Agnes, is seen as a near lock for best actress.
She may face competition from Emma Stone for her enigmatic role in conspiracy drama Bugonia, and from Norwegian actor Renate Reinsve in arthouse favourite Sentimental Value. With the Academy’s international voting base continuing to grow, Sentimental Value is one of several non-English-language films being discussed as possible best picture contenders, alongside Persian-language Palme d’Or winner It Was Just An Accident and Brazil’s The Secret Agent. However, Davis has cautioned that “space feels limited” for all three.
Wagner Moura, who stars in The Secret Agent as a scientist fleeing Brazil’s 1970s military dictatorship, is also expected to be in the mix for best actor, alongside DiCaprio and Jordan. Still, the category’s current frontrunner is Timothée Chalamet, whose performance as a gifted but abrasive ping pong prodigy in 1950s New York in Marty Supreme has already earned him a Golden Globe, a Critics Choice Award and more.
This awards season also marks the debut of the Oscar for best casting, recognising the casting directors who shape films long before cameras roll. With no previous winners to set a benchmark, the criteria remain open to interpretation.
“Is it star power? Ensemble cohesion? Finding a discovery?” asked Davis.
The Academy will announce this year’s nominations on Thursday at 5:30 am in Los Angeles. The 98th Oscars ceremony is scheduled to take place on March 15.
