Oscar Noms Analysis: Six Takeaways From the Sinners Surge, the International Show of Force and More

What are the topline takeaways from Thursday morning’s Oscar nominations?

1) As Netflix and Paramount fight for Warner Bros., two Warner Bros. films will fight for the top Oscars

Sinners landed 16 noms, besting by two the record of 14 that was previously shared by 1950’s All About Eve, 1997’s Titanic and 2016’s La La Land (so no, its nom in the newly created casting category was not the difference-maker). Moreover, it landed a nom in every category in which it had a plausible chance, whereas each of the other top contenders had at least one glaring miss: One Battle After Another missed Chase Infiniti for best actress; Hamnet missed Paul Mescal for best supporting actor, as well as cinematography and film editing; Frankenstein missed Guillermo del Toro for best director, as well as VFX; Marty Supreme missed makeup/hairstyling; The Secret Agent missed original screenplay; etc.

All in all, it’s a remarkable achievement for Sinners. But is it enough to jolt the widely held belief that One Battle After Another is the film to beat for best picture?

Over the 16 seasons since the Academy returned to a preferential/ranked-choice ballot to determine its best picture winner, the film with the most noms (or one of the films that tied for the most noms) went on to win best picture only six times (Oppenheimer, Everything Everywhere All at Once, The Shape of Water, Birdman, The King’s Speech and The Hurt Locker). So having the most noms, in and of itself, is not a game-changer.

But 16 noms — three more than the second-most-nominated film (One Battle) and seven ahead of the third (Frankenstein, Marty Supreme and Sentimental Value tied with nine) — is quite a statement. And a number of smart industry insiders told me this morning —both at and after the nominations announcement — that they think Sinners is well-positioned moving forward. Its success was less assured; it provokes a less uncomfortable conversation about race; and it’s likely to win the best ensemble Actor Award, which could further fuel its momentum.

Regardless, it will be interesting to see how these two films —both from great filmmakers who are telling largely original stories, even if One Battle is technically adapted from Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel Vineland —are promoted during phase two, not least because they share the same distributor, Warner Bros., which, largely because of them, led all studios by far with 30 noms … and is now, ironically enough, in the process of being sold. (Fun fact: It has been more than a half-century since we last had a best picture race in which there were two clear frontrunners and both hailed from the same studio — Paramount’sChinatown vs. The Godfather Part II, which co-led the field with 11 noms each, 51 years ago!)

I expect that Warners will give its two films equal treatment —as it has done thus far, as best as I can tell, with FYC ads, billboards, etc. —and let the chips fall where they may. (Indeed, even at award shows, studio co-chiefs Michael De Luca and Pam Abdy split up so that one can sit with the One Battle folks and the other can sit with the Sinners folks.) But this won’t stop personal reps from going all out on behalf of their respective clients.

2) It’s a small world after all

At a time when the leadership of the United States is projecting an “America first” attitude, the L.A.-based Academy is doing the opposite.

Indeed, feature-length films that are primarily or entirely in a language other than English collectively landed 22 noms, tying a record set in 2023 and matched in 2024, with those noms spread among Sentimental Value (nine), The Secret Agent (four), It Was Just an Accident (two), Sirāt (two), Arco (one),Cutting Through Rocks (one), Kokuho (one), Little Amelie or the Character of Rain (one) and Mr. Nobody Against Putin (one).

Moreover, there is at least one non-English-language film represented in every Oscar category for just the second time (2024 was the first); there are two in the best picture category, The Secret Agent and Sentimental Value, tying the record set in 2025, and marking the eighth consecutive year in which the top category includes at least one; and, of the 20 slots for acting noms, an unprecedented four, or 20 percent, went to non-English-language performances: The Secret Agent’s lead actor Wagner Moura and Sentimental Value’s lead actress Rentate Reinsve, supporting actor Stellan Skarsgård and supporting actress Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas.

Believe it or not, Skarsgård’s is the first non-English-language performance ever nominated in the best supporting actor category!

3) The significance of Oscar precursors must be questioned

This year’s strong showing of non-English-language films is undoubtedly related to the significant internationalization of the Academy’s membership in recent years. Indeed, in the aftermath of the #OscarsSoWhite controversy of a decade ago, the organization, seeking to diversify itself, recruited not just more people of color and women, but also more people based outside of America. Today, a full 25 percent of the membership hails from abroad, and they are largely accustomed to — and therefore undeterred by — movies with subtitles.

Something that this new reality is forcing all of us to contemplate is whether or not any of the Oscar precursors —the award shows that precede the Oscars, and often claim to predict them —still provide any real sense of where the Academy is headed.

The guild honors —including SAG-AFTRA’s Actor Awards, the Directors Guild’s DGA Awards and the Producers Guild’s PGA Awards —are determined by the members of those respective guilds, the vast majority of whom are Americans based in the United States. This year, zero non-English-language films or performances were nominated in the film categories of the Actor Awards; zero directors of non-English-language films were nominated for the top DGA Award; and only one non-English-language film, Sentimental Value, was included among the 10 nominees for the top PGA Award.

Clearly, the preferences of the guilds no longer reflect the preferences of the Academy.

Meanwhile, the BAFTA Awards are chosen by the members of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, who are primarily based in the U.K. They would seem to offer a pretty strong sense of how the sizable European bloc of Academy members might be leaning — except for the fact that BAFTA employs all sorts of weighting to try to ensure a diverse group of nominees. That’s admirable, but not consistent with the way the Academy noms are determined.

As for the Critics Choice and Golden Globe awards? The results of the former are determined by the members of the Critics Choice Association (I’m one of them), among whom are very few, if any, people based outside the U.S. The results of the latter are determined by the members of the Golden Globes organization, which is a very international group. But both groups are comprised entirely of journalists, of which there are virtually none in the Academy.

This year, I think the Globes probably had the greatest influence of all precursors over the Oscar nominations —their ceremony was held the night before Oscar nominations voting began, and they awarded top prizes to Skarsgård, The Secret Agent’s Wagner Moura and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You’s Rose Byrne, all of whom went on to Oscar noms that were far from assured. But nowadays, no precursor group has enough demographic overlap with the Academy to really be counted on as a predictor.

4) Look out for the coattails

Another part of the Academy’s efforts to rectify its #OscarsSoWhite problem involved adding a considerable number of younger members to its voting rolls. The hope was that they would nudge the organization to make hipper choices, and, one could argue, they have done so. But an unintended byproduct of their addition, I believe, is that they are also voting having seen fewer movies than older members, because they are still busy with their careers.

I do not think it is a coincidence that, in recent years, there are markedly fewer nominees — across all categories, but especially the four pertaining to acting and the two pertaining to writing —who do not hail from a best picture nominee. More and more voters are casting their ballots having seen fewer and fewer films, so they pick the nominees in their specialty area —acting, writing, etc. —from the same relatively small pool of films.

This year, of the 20 acting nominees, only four hailed from a film that wasn’t also nominated for best picture: Byrne; Ethan Hawke for Blue Moon; Kate Hudson for Song Sung Blue; and Amy Madigan for Weapons. Of the 10 writing nominees, only two hailed from a film that wasn’t also nominated for best picture: Blue Moon and It Was Just an Accident. And five other categories — casting, cinematography, film editing, original score and production design— were filled entirely with best picture nominees.

5) Sequels fatigue has set in

Twenty-two years ago, the members of the Academy bestowed 11 nominations —and then 11 wins — on The Return of the King, the third and final installment of The Lord of the Rings trilogy. The three films had been shot together, and then were rolled out in three consecutive years. While The Return of the King was certainly a very fine film, it was universally understood at the time that its big Oscars haul was really a recognition of the entire franchise.

These days, the Academy seems decidedly less interested in recognizing films that keep going back to the well, so to speak.

Indeed, the second and final installment of the Wicked franchise, Wicked: For Good — which was shot at the same time as the first (which was nominated for 10 Oscars and won two), but released a year later — was completely shut out of this morning’s noms. Not even Ariana Grande’s wonderful supporting turn, which had been nominated by every major precursor group, was recognized.

And the third and possibly final installment of the Avatar franchise, Avatar: Fire and Ash — portions of which were shot at the same time as the second — was nominated in only two below-the-line categories (best costume design and visual effects). That’s down from nine noms, including best picture and director, for 2009’s Avatar (which ended up winning three) and four noms, including best picture, for 2022’s Avatar: The Way of Water (which ended up winning one).

This is not a backlash to popcorn/blockbuster movies — F1 and Sinners got best picture noms. It is, in the view of several Academy members with whom I spoke to on Thursday, a backlash to the sense of a cash-grab. This may be of some concern to the backers of Dune: Part Three, which is due out on Dec. 18, and has awards aspirations.

6) Looking ahead

While I wouldn’t totally count out Hamnet, which is a well-made film that has deeply moved a lot of people and could benefit from the preferential ballot, the best picture race is clearly looking like a contest between One Battle After Another and Sinners, which will go head-to-head in 10 other categories as well: best director (Paul Thomas Anderson vs. Ryan Coogler), actor (Leonardo DiCaprio vs. Michael B. Jordan), supporting actor (Benicio Del Toro and Sean Penn vs. Delroy Lindo), supporting actress (Teyana Taylor vs. Wunmi Mosaku), casting, cinematography, film editing, production design, score and sound.

Three of the four acting categories are also looking like nailbiters. (Jessie Buckley is the prohibitive best actress frontrunner for Hamnet.)

Best actor includes not only DiCaprio, a past winner at the top of his game, and Jordan, a first-time nominee for playing twins and their zombie variations, but also Marty Supreme’s Timothée Chalamet, a nominee in the category for the second year in a row and third time in less than a decade, who is probably the frontrunner; The Secret Agent’s Moura, who will have a lot of international support; and Blue Moon’s Ethan Hawke, a highly respected veteran.

Best supporting actor got a lot more interesting with the nom for Lindo; now Skarsgård is not the category’s only overdue septuagenarian standout from a best picture nominee. Then there’s the two One Battle representatives, Del Toro or Penn. Could those pairs each split and pave the way for Frankenstein’s Jacob Elordi, who already won the Critics Choice Award and is likely to win the Actor Award? That would be something.

And then there’s best supporting actress, in which the only nominee who is not associated with a best picture nominee, Weapons’ Madigan, is the sentimental favorite, having last been nominated 40 years ago. She won the Critics Choice Award, but lost the Golden Globe to One Battle’s Taylor, who is probably the safer bet for the Oscar. Why? Because of those best picture coattails I was talking about. Now that the noms are out, more Academy members will see more of the nominated films before casting their final ballots; indeed, this year, the Academy has introduced new measures to try to make it harder for members to vote in a category in which they haven’t seen all of the nominees. But it’s still going to be very hard for someone to win an acting award as a sole nominee of a film.

But there are 52 days between now and the 98th Oscars on March 15, 2026, so a lot can — and will— still happen!