If box office mattered, Wicked for Good would be a force to be reckoned with. The pre-sales are through the roof, breaking Fandango’s record for first-day sales for 2025.
That might have mattered once upon a time, back when the Oscars had some relevance for the majority. I think it’s safe to say those days are gone. Not only won’t box office matter when it comes to how much a movie made, it’s possible that how much a movie cost might not even matter, especially since when it comes to any kind of criticism of Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another, it’s All Quiet on the Leftern Front. The fans are fanatical and totalitarian. You are NOT ALLOWED to criticize it or else you will be accused of not having “media literacy.” Oh, how I hate that term.
The reason One Battle After Another might not have to care about box office is the same reason other films that satisfied a deeper purpose did not. CODA didn’t have to make one dime to win. It didn’t matter how much Moonlight made, or even Everything Everywhere All At Once, which was up against a film that was probably the best-reviewed by critics and audiences alike, and yet it still didn’t win.
To borrow a line from Jaws, take a good, long look at these numbers. Those proportions are correct. What Top Gun: Maverick didn’t do, however, was speak for the high-status elites in the bubble. It didn’t reflect their values. It didn’t make a political point, beyond glorifying the military. But it was a good movie. And probably should have won the Academy Award for Best Picture. I can promise you no other film nominated that year will be remembered as well as this one.
There is little incentive now to elevate or amplify movies that don’t convey a social justice message. A movie like Derek Cianfrance’s The Roofman, opening this weekend, seems like the kind of film that might draw audiences, yet it has almost no buzz in the awards race right now. Jeff Wells has written up a praiseworthy review of the film, but it’s hard to know if it will make money, if it will resonate with audiences.
The Oscars have never been more insulated and isolated than they are right now. I have never seen the game as rigged as it is, and maybe that’s because I am finally an outsider rather than someone studios competed to buy ads with. My inventory would sell out every year, and thus, I was invested in playing the game like everyone else. Now, the ads are few and far between, if at all (insert dystopian nightmare here). I can see the race from a slightly different perspective, and I’m a bit horrified by what I see.
On the one hand, who cares, right? It’s a meaningless, circular system that awards gold statues to people for reasons that have little to do with whether or not they are the best in a given year. By the time the pile of movies and performances is winnowed down by bloggers and critics, there isn’t much left for the people movies are actually made for. It is a fantasy diorama for the small portion of people who care about it, and that makes it something separate from the hum and thrum of culture and real life.
So, I write my predictions every year, considering what thousands of industry voters will do, rather than the hundreds who decide the Critics’ Choice, Golden Globes, or the Critics’ Circle. But thousands. There is currently a unified effort to push Paul Thomas Anderson toward his first Oscar win and One Battle After Another to win Best Picture. After 26 years in this business, I know that when there is a level of motion for a movie, you have to just get out of its way. Maybe it will win, maybe it won’t, but for now, the pundits are all united.
The next phase is the critics’ phase of lists and awards. Of course, One Battle After Another will sweep – it will win New York, LA, and the National Society of Film Critics. It will win all the various awards in St. Louis, Chicago, and Boston. It will be a clean sweep – and plenty of films have done exactly that and faltered when it came to the big guilds, but it’s too soon to know whether or not that will be this film’s fate.
One Battle After Another speaks for a very specific type of person and a very specific generation of millennial film critics. There are a few pundits who are predicting Hamnet, and some are predicting Sinners. The majority, by a long way, are predicting One Battle. However, one thing we can be certain of is that it will sweep the critics’ awards.
At the end of November, the real voting begins.
December 4th — Golden Globes ballots turned in
December 5th — Critics Choice Nominations announced
December 8th — Golden Globe nominations announced
December 8th — Academy shortlist voting begins
December 12th — Academy shortlist voting ends
December 15th — SAG voting begins
December 15th — DGA voting begins
December 16th — Academy shortlist announced
December 18th — PGA voting begins
January 4th –Critics Choice Awards
January 7th — SAG award nominations
January 8th — DGA nominations
January 9th — PGA nominations
January 10 — Academy bake-off – casting, makeup and hairstyling, sound and visual effects categories
January 11th — Golden Globe awards
January 12 — Oscar nomination voting begins
January 16 — Oscar nomination voting ends.
January 22 — Oscar nominations
January 27th — WGA nominations, BAFTA nominations
February 6th — DGA voting ends
February 7th — DGA Awards
February 26th — Oscar voting begins
February 28th — PGA Awards
March 1 — SAG Awards
March 5 — Oscar voting ends
March 15 — The Oscars
Here are the rough numbers of each group:
Critics Choice — 600 members (I am one)
Golden Globe – 300 members, mostly brought in after they were canceled and are international voters.
DGA — 18,000 members
SAG — 150,000 members (but only 2,000 are on the nominating committee, chosen at random)
PGA — roughly 8,000
The Academy — roughly 10,000
How I knew Anora would win last year at the big guilds, or how I guessed, was that it was the best story, the best movie. However, this year might not be like last year, as Paul Thomas Anderson is so overdue and so popular; voters might simply do what they did with Christopher Nolan and Oppenheimer, pay the piper.
We assume the Critics Choice will go nuts over it and will award it everything under the sun. Probably One Battle goes in with an obscene number of nominations, like 13 or 14. Then, we assume it will make the cut everywhere else, from the Golden Globes to the PGA to the DGA to SAG and from thence, to Oscar.
The Oscar voters are a slightly different breed from PGA and DGA because of all of those international voters added in. The question for One Battle is whether the most expensive film to win since Titanic will become a reality and if so, does that mean box office really has no relation to movie making anymore?
One Battle is set to open in China next week, on or around October 18th, which might help give it a boost to at least break even with international numbers. It could keep making money and edge up to $200 mil, and that would mean it erases the argument about box office. I’m guessing, though, it won’t matter. Hollywood is insulated from the practical reality of things like the free market, box office, and ratings, and the like.
A win for One Battle After Another is yet another message to the rest of America that Hollywood can’t stand them, won’t make movies for them, and they’re not invited to the show. Most people covering the race won’t see it that way, but if you know, you know.
I think there is a good chance it wins on pure politics, as Bret Easton Ellis said per World of Reel. From Jordan’s site:
Ellis, who’s no stranger to controversy, made it clear that he’s a longtime fan of PTA. In fact, he called “There Will Be Blood” “maybe the best film of this century.” But when it comes to “One Battle After Another,” the novelist isn’t impressed — either with the film or the acclaim surrounding it.
“It’s kind of shocking to see these kind of accolades for — I’m sorry, it’s not a very good movie — because of its political ideology, and it’s so obvious that’s what they’re responding to, why it’s considered a masterpiece, the greatest film of the decade, the greatest film ever made. Because it really aligns with this kind of leftist sensibility.”
Ellis went so far as to predict that “One Battle After Another” will soon be seen as “a kind of musty relic of the post-Kamala Harris era — that thing everyone gathers around and pretends is so fantastic and so great when it really isn’t, just to make a point.”
And:
He also took aim at The New York Times’ Manohla Dargis, who called the film “important.” Ellis fired back:
“No, it is not. It has really not read the room. It has not read the room at all about what’s going on in America.”
Ellis concluded his takedown with a line that perfectly sums up his frustration:
“There’s a liberal mustiness to this movie that already feels very dated by October 2025. Very dated. And it just doesn’t read the room. You know, it reads a tiny corner of the room, but it does not read what is going on in America.”
Whether you agree with him or not, it’s classic Ellis — sharp, bold, and completely unmoved by the hype. We need more voices like his in film criticism, not less.
Paul Thomas Anderson is overdue by this point. He made a movie that checks the boxes and gave this crowd exactly what it wanted. Does that make it a great movie? No, it doesn’t. Sinners is better. But powerful people who are used to having control over culture will feel seen. That probably matters more.
Be that as it may, I still think Hamnet might have the edge because it can appeal to a wider audience, not just a select few. That’s how I see it, though I will admit it is difficult to fight the overwhelming tide at this point.
What we could be living through, ironically enough, is 1999 all over. Saving Private Ryan was the one to beat. It cost only $70 million and made over $200 million. Shakespeare in Love cost just $25 million and went on to make over $100 million. It was the better movie. Sorry, but it was and is. As great as the first 45 minutes of Saving Private Ryan are, like One Battle After Another, it suffers from weak writing (again, no offense).
Shakespeare in Love is a perfect film. It just is. Now we have another Shakespeare movie, the flipside of Shakespeare in Love, that is produced by Steven Spielberg — so put it all together, friends, and you have a funny kind of payback where Spielberg would win Best Picture of a movie about Shakespeare all of these years later.
I think there is just some kind of magic there when the Bard is in play that voters, especially actors, can’t resist. I sobbed during the trailer. I know I will ugly cry like everyone else during the movie. How do people turn off their hearts when they are moved like that? Like Shakespeare in Love’s ending, which was killer:
Hamnet’s ending is also killer. Gwyneth won Best Actress, Jessie Buckley will win Best Actress…just saying!
Either way, here are my predictions
Best Picture
Hamnet
One Battle After Another
Sinners
Sentimental Value
Wicked for Good
Weapons
Frankenstein
Bugonia
Marty Supreme
Weapons
Best Director
Paul Thomas Anderson, One Battle After Another
Chloé Zhao, Hamnet
Ryan Coogler, Sinners
Joachim Trier, Sentimental Value
Guillermo Del Toro, Frankenstein
Best Actress
Jessie Buckley, Hamnet
Cynthia Erivo, Wicked for Good
Renate Reinsve, Sentimental Value
Emma Stone, Bugonia
Julia Roberts, After the Hunt
Best Actor
Timothée Chalament, Marty Supreme
Leonardo DiCaprio, One Battle After Another
Jeremy Allen White, Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere
Dwayne Johnson, The Smashing Machine
Michael B. Jordan, Sinners
Supporting Actress
Amy Madigan, Weapons
Teyana Taylor, One Battle After Another
Ariana Grande, Wicked for Good
Ayo Edebiri, After the Hunt
Glenn Close, Wake Up Dead Man
Supporting Actor
Paul Mescal, Hamnet
Stellan Skarsgård, Sentimental Value
Sean Penn, One Battle After Another
Delroy Lindo, Sinners
Adam Sandler, Jay Kelly
Original Screenplay
Sinners
Sentimental Value
Weapons
A House of Dynamite
Bugonia
Adapted Screenplay
Hamnet
One Battle After Another
The Life of Chuck
Frankenstein
Wicked for Good
Casting
Sinners
One Battle After Another
Wicked For Good
Hamnet
Springsteen Deliver Me From Nowhere
And that’s all I got. Have a great weekend.
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By: Sasha Stone
Title: 2026 Oscar Predictions: Shakespeare’s Prophecy
Sourced From: www.awardsdaily.com/2025/10/10/2026-oscar-predictions-shakespeares-prophecy/
Published Date: Fri, 10 Oct 2025 23:00:06 +0000
