My Final Oscar Winner Predictions
At long last, it’s nally time for the 93rd Academy Awards
It’s all come down to this. The longest awards season is drawing to a close, after an excruciating pandemic year that nearly destroyed the movie business. History looks to be made at the Oscars, with women and people of color getting recognition — but there’s also room for a surprise or two.
Here are my final predictions for the rd Oscars.
BEST PICTURE
• “Nomadland” (Searchlight Pictures) — Mollye Asher, Dan Janvey, Frances Mcdormand, Peter Spears, Chloé Zhao
It’s hard to bet against the winner of the PGA, the DGA, the Golden
Globes and BAFTA. Still, “ ” and “La La Land” won those exact awards, then lost to “Parasite” and “Moonlight” (which won the drama Globe) respectively. In the end, though, the season has shaped up for “Nomadland,” and it’s one of the stronger contenders we’ve seen in the past years.
DIRECTOR
• Chloé Zhao, “Nomadland” (Searchlight Pictures) Winner of the Critics Choice, Golden Globe and DGA awards, Zhao has been unstoppable. No matter what upsets could be creeping up in picture, she seems assured this prize, which is one of her four nominations.
ACTOR
• Chadwick Boseman,
“Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” (Netflix)
While Anthony Hopkins won the BAFTA, Boseman looks far enough ahead to take this trophy. The actor, who died last August of cancer at , will follow Peter Finch (“Network”), the only previous posthumous winner in the category.
ACTRESS
• Frances Mcdormand, “Nomadland” (Searchlight Pictures)
Your Oscar pool’s success will likely bank on this category. Ultimately, any of the five could win it. Still, even with a different winner at each televised awards ceremony, the informal polling of Oscar voters suggests this could be down to Frances Mcdormand and Andra Day. By a hair, Mcdormand — the BAFTA winner — could emerge victorious, becoming the only threetime lead actress winner and just one trophy behind Katharine Hepburn’s record.
SUPPORTING ACTOR
• Daniel Kaluuya, “Judas and the Black Messiah” (Warner Bros.)
No person in modern history has lost the Oscar after winning all the televised award shows. This one seems locked.
SUPPORTING ACTRESS
• Yuh-jung Youn, “Minari” (A24) While the category was open at the beginning of the season,
SAG and the BAFTAS changed that. Yuh-jung Youn is on track to become just the second Asian woman to win an acting prize. Olivia Colman and Amanda Seyfried do have supporters and could be closer to spoiling than most people assume.
ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
• “Promising Young Woman” (Focus Features) — Emerald Fennell
Despite winning the Golden Globe for best screenplay, Aaron Sorkin hasn’t been able to win elsewhere. With BAFTA, Critics Choice and WGA in hand, Emerald Fennell is poised to become the second solo female winner of this category after Diablo Cody for “Juno” ( ).
ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
• “The Father” (Sony Pictures Classics) — Christopher Hampton, Florian Zeller Conventional wisdom says “Nomadland” will add this to its winning night, but BAFTA spoke otherwise. With six noms, “The Father” could pick up a prize somewhere, and Christopher Hampton’s legacy will help
is the feel-good film of the bunch. The timeliness of “Time” is a factor, but I think it just misses out.