Predicting the Oscars for me, and everyone else, is always about heart vs. head. Your heart wants what it wants. Your head wants to be right. Do you follow the stats? Do you follow the vibes? Falling in love during Oscar season can sometimes be a recipe for disaster. I should know. My first lesson in heartbreak goes all the way back to my first year covering the Oscars for my website called Oscarwatch.com. It was the year 2000 and the movies were Gladiator vs. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon vs. Traffic. That was an easy year to fall in love. Ang Lee’s masterpiece was unlike anything any of us had seen. Our minds were blown but we also knew the barriers back then were significant: a “foreign language” film and not your typical studio fare.
Beautiful women fighting wire-fu – it was dazzling. It was a huge blockbuster and I desperately wanted that movie to win. Gladiator was, to me, fairly generic and boring. Of course, a masterpiece by today’s standards. I did not want that movie to win, and so I gamed the system and forced my mind to go along with my heart. In my first year of predicting the Oscars for this site, I got it wrong. Gladiator won.
Things were so innocent then. Who knew things would turn out the way they did? I certainly didn’t. I’ve had years where I refused to predict the film everyone knew would win. Like The Social Network vs. The King’s Speech, for instance.
It was pure stubbornness on my part and ultimately silly. Now, the entire Oscar industry has more or less canceled me — hilarious, when you think about it. So no one really cares what I think. They didn’t notice when I was among the rare few who called Anora for PGA/DGA. I got Moonlight right back in 2016 by looking at the preferential ballot. These are glimpses in the past 26 years of my time covering the Oscar race.
Here we are, all of these years later, and it’s another heart vs. head year for me. I find it difficult to fall in line and predict One Battle After Another, even though it is obviously the frontrunner. But hope is the thing with feathers, and a part of me can’t believe the Academy won’t award Sinners the top prize. Heart vs. head betrays me every damned time, but so what?
Best Picture never just means Best Picture. It never has. It never will. There did, however, used to be a baseline. There used to be a time when movies had to seep into the culture. It would be rare for you to mention one, and your average American would not have heard of it. Now, it’s a miracle if they have heard of the winner, let alone any of the nominees. It’s become such an insular, closed system, and it’s like pulling teeth just getting a popular movie into the race.
Remember how movies like Forrest Gump and Platoon penetrated culture and changed how we thought about and talked about events in our country? That no longer exists. Except the very few times that it does and Sinners was one of those times. My poor heart is all in and there ain’t a damned thing I can do about it. My head is getting frustrated with me by now. What are you doing, it says. You KNOW that isn’t happening. You know it’s Screenplay, Score, Casting, maybe Cinematography, maybe one of the acting awards, MAYBE.
But — but — says my heart. How can they be this daft? Because, says my head, despite it all, they’re virtue signaling bubble dwellers who care about how THEY look so they like the movie that depicts the white guy well, not the movie that doesn’t. Oh, says my heart, but that scene in Sinners — that SCENE at the end…
It’s just so beautiful and imaginative and full of life and originality, unlike anything I’ve ever seen on the big screen.
Shut up, says my head. You’ve done enough damage. 26 years I’ve had to deal with this crap as pundit after pundit gets higher scores on Gold Derby! Of course, you got kicked off Gold Derby, didn’t you! You’re screwing everything up.
My heart has no response. It wants what it wants. And so, my friends, Sinners it will have to be. Down with the ship. But I’m not just predicting Sinners for Best Picture. No, I’m going all in. I’m hitting every marker I think it can win, and it’s gonna be messy and ugly. I would look away if I were you. It’s not something you need to see. But it is out of my control.
So yes, One Battle After Another is poised to win all the top prizes. It won more awards than any film heading into the season. No film has ever won the NBR, the Gotham, the Globe, The BAFTA, the Critics Choice, the DGA and PGA. It’s just never happened before.
And that sounds bad, right? Or good, I guess. Depending on how you see the race. But you should also know many of these groups aren’t the same as they used to be. They’ve changed, along with everything else. What drives this win is pure love for Paul Thomas Anderson and that’s pretty much it. Loving him and wanting to see him win has obliterated every flaw the movie has. It’s just how it is. After 26 years, I know this to be true and there’s nothing I can do about it. Believe me, I’ve tried.
We’re also watching, what I’d call, “woke fatique,” which means voters are tired of pretending to be something other than who and what they really are. And that means resentment has built up over Sinners, especially on social media where Film Twitter sneers at the Sinners fans who love the film passionately and desperately want it to win.
But it’s more than just the movie. When Brokeback Mountain lost to Crash it wasn’t so much that people thought Crash was that bad. It was more than Brokeback Mountain’s win would have validated a whole community of people – gay men, mostly, who happen to be among Oscar’s biggest fans. It felt like a slap in the face. With the steak eaters, a movie about gay love was a heavy lift. With Sinners, it’s starting to feel similar to me. After using black people for years now to virtue signal, to host award shows, to represent THEM – the mostly white ruling class — as they called half the country “racist” it’s astonishing that, even after 16 nominations and everything else Sinners has accomplished this year that it might not win. But it might not.
I saw one Twitter user defend Michael B. Jordan and say “he played twins.” Then I watched Film Twitter assholes say “oh the people who see three movies a year think they know what acting is.” Shut the help up. Shut up. These idiots get to see movies for free. They don’t pay to see them. Film fans pay to see movies and the Oscars should care about that.
Hollywood has to reach out to the public and make movies for them, not for themselves. No one cares what Hollywood thinks of itself. Entertain the people or shut the hell up. You can make movies for art’s sake. That’s fine. Trip the light fantastic and Film Twitter will swoon. But movies — MOVIE MOVIES — need an audience. They just do.
Anyway, it doesn’t really matter if Sinners wins or not. I just would like to hear Film Twitter cease and desist bitching about it. I would like to hear people on the Right stop bitching about 16 nominations. Movies that win the Oscar for Best Picture are never all the way bad. They’re okay. They’re tolerable. But do they swing from the fences? No, not often. Sinners does.
So, let’s look at the stat that could help Sinners win. It’s the best shot but it’s not 100%. It’s the WGA+ACE+SAG.
So first, let’s look at this year:
If you’ll notice, ACE and SAG match. Here is the best case scenario, from a stats perspective, for One Battle:
If you’ll notice, SAG and ACE do not match. Now, let’s look at when they did since 2009:
It happened just three times:
Since SAG began, only two films have won DGA + ACE and lost Best Picture, American Hustle and The Trial of the Chicago 7. Neither of them won WGA. So really, no film since the beginning of SAG has won SAG+ACE+WGA and lost Best Picture. Maybe it means something, maybe it doesn’t, but that’s Sinners’ best-case scenario from a stats perspective.
Crash and Parasite did not win the PGA or the DGA and still swept these awards. The question now becomes will Ryan Coogler also win or will Paul Thomas Anderson win? I think PTA probably wins but I’m still gonna go all in for Sinners because the heart wants what it wants. So I get it wrong. Just don’t copy me so you get it wrong, too. Copy some of the other Oscar pundits who do a lot better than me. This is no Country for Old Oscar Bloggers.
So let’s do this.
Best Picture
1. Sinners (Warner Bros.)
2. One Battle after Another
3. Hamnet (Focus Features)
4. Marty Supreme (A24)
5. Frankenstein (Netflix)
6. Bugonia (Focus Features)
7. F1 (Apple)
8. The Secret Agent (Neon)
9. Sentimental Value (Neon)
10. Train Dreams (Netflix)
Best Director
1. Sinners, Ryan Coogler
2. One Battle after Another, Paul Thomas Anderson
3. Hamnet, Chloé Zhao
4. Marty Supreme, Josh Safdie
5. Sentimental Value, Joachim Trier
Best Actor
1. Michael B. Jordan in Sinners
2. Timothée Chalamet in Marty Supreme
3. Leonardo DiCaprio in One Battle after Another
4. Wagner Moura in The Secret Agent
5. Ethan Hawke in Blue Moon
Best Actress
1. Jessie Buckley in Hamnet
2. Rose Byrne in If I Had Legs I’d Kick You
3. Kate Hudson in Song Sung Blue
4. Renate Reinsve in Sentimental Value
5. Emma Stone in Bugonia
Best Supporting Actor
1. Sean Penn in One Battle after Another
2. Delroy Lindo in Sinners
3. Stellan Skarsgård in Sentimental Value
4. Benicio Del Toro in One Battle after Another
5. Jacob Elordi in Frankenstein
Best Supporting Actress
1. Amy Madigan in Weapons
2. Teyana Taylor in One Battle after Another
3. Wunmi Mosaku in Sinners
4. Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas in Sentimental Value
5. Elle Fanning in Sentimental Value
Best Adapted Screenplay
1. One Battle after Another
2. Hamnet
3. Train Dreams
4. Bugonia
5. Frankenstein
Best Original Screenplay
1. Sinners
2. Marty Supreme
3. Sentimental Value
4. It Was Just an Accident
5. Blue Moon
Best Editing
1. One Battle after Another
2. F1
3. Sinners
4. Marty Supreme
5. Sentimental Value
Best International Feature
1. Sentimental Value
2. The Secret Agent
3. It Was Just an Accident
4. Sirāt
5. The Voice of Hind Rajab
Animated Feature
1. KPop Demon Hunters
2. Arco
3. Elio
4. Little Amélie or the Character of Rain
5. Zootopia 2
Best Animated Short Film
1. Butterfly
2. Retirement Plan
3. Forevergreen
4. The Girl Who Cried Pearls
5. The Three Sisters
Best Casting
1. Sinners
2. One Battle after Another
3. Hamnet
4. Marty Supreme
5. The Secret Agent
Best Cinematography
1. Sinners
2. One Battle after Another
2. Frankenstein
3. Marty Supreme
5. Train Dreams
Best Costume Design
1. Frankenstein
2. Sinners
3. Hamnet
4. Marty Supreme
5. Avatar: Fire and Ash
Best Documentary Feature
1. The Perfect Neighbor
2. The Alabama Solution
3. Come See Me in the Good Light
4. Cutting through Rocks
5. Mr. Nobody against Putin
Best Documentary Short
1. All the Empty Rooms
2. Armed Only with a Camera: The Life and Death of Brent Renaud
3. Children No More: Were and Are Gone
4. The Devil Is Busy
5. Perfectly a Strangeness
Best Live Action Short
1. Two People Exchanging Saliva
2. Butcher’s Stain
3. The Singers
4. A Friend of Dorothy
5. Jane Austen’s Period Drama
Best Makeup and Hairstyling
1. Frankenstein
2. Sinners
3. Kokuho
4. The Smashing Machine
5. The Ugly Stepsister
Original Score
Sinners, Ludwig Goransso
One Battle after Another, Jonny Greenwood
Bugonia. Jerskin Fendrix
Frankenstein. Alexandre Desplat
Hamnet. Max Richter
Best Original Song
1. I Lied To You from Sinners
2. Golden from KPop Demon Hunters
3. Train Dreams from Train Dreams
4. Dear Me from Diane Warren: Relentless
5. Sweet Dreams Of Joy from Viva Verdi!
Best Production Design
1. Frankenstein
2. Sinners
3. Hamnet
4. Marty Supreme
5. One Battle after Another
Original Sound
1. F1
2. Sinners
3. Sirāt
4. One Battle after Another
5. Frankenstein
Best Visual Effects
1. Avatar: Fire and Ash
2. Sinners
3. F1
4. Jurassic World Rebirth
5. The Lost Bus
Go big or go home.
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By: Sasha Stone
Title: 2026 Oscar Predictions: Will Sinners Fans Get a Happy Ending?
Sourced From: www.awardsdaily.com/2026/03/07/2026-oscar-predictions-will-sinners-fans-get-a-happy-ending/
Published Date: Sat, 07 Mar 2026 00:02:00 +0000
