Oscars 2024: why Oppenheimer should and will win best picture, and other Academy Awards predictions, from Ryan Gosling to Holocaust film The Zone of Interest
- Ahead of the 96th Academy Awards ceremony there has been feverish debate over which films and actors will come away from the night with Oscars
- Oppenheimer is set to win best picture, Ryan Gosling may lose out on best supporting actor, and best international feature film is probably already in the bag
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The Barbenheimer phenomenon gripped the public’s imagination in 2023 and helped prop up ailing cinema chains. Now, with the 96th Academy Awards ceremony coming on March 10, that battle resumes.
So who will win? And who should win?
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Best picture
Who will win: Oppenheimer
But his three-hour drama about theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer and the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki is ideally suited to voter tastes.
Already triumphing in every awards show going, it is the red-hot favourite here.
Who should win: Oppenheimer
Best actor
Who will win: Cillian Murphy (Oppenheimer)
Nominated for an Oscar for the first time, Irish actor Murphy has already taken home the Golden Globe and Bafta (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) best actor prizes for his tightly wound turn as the father of the atomic bomb.
After graduating from supporting roles in earlier Nolan films, Murphy has the momentum to win best actor.
Who should win: Paul Giamatti (The Holdovers)
There is a lot of love for Giamatti, who should have won for his previous Alexander Payne collaboration Sideways two decades ago.
He may yet lose to Murphy, but his performance as a curmudgeonly teacher kicking around an empty private school in 1970 is sublime, and rewarding Giamatti would be a fine way to pay homage to a brilliant career.
Best actress
Who will win: Lily Gladstone (Killers of the Flower Moon)
Scorsese’s film has not quite been the awards bait you might expect, overshadowed by Oppenheimer, but this is one category it is destined to win. Gladstone’s performance as a determined Osage wife is the heart of the movie.
Although she was beaten by Emma Stone (for Poor Things) at the Baftas, the Academy is likely to veer towards her.
Who should win: Sandra Hüller (Anatomy of a Fall)
Best supporting actress
Who will win: Da’Vine Joy Randolph (The Holdovers)
Randolph’s work as grieving mother and cafeteria manager Mary Lamb in Payne’s bittersweet 1970-set comedy is as poignant as it is funny. While Payne saw her in the brash Eddie Murphy comedy Dolomite Is My Name, this is proof of what a dramatic talent she is.
Who should win: Da’Vine Joy Randolph (The Holdovers)
Randolph is streets ahead of her fellow nominees, although in another year America Ferrara – with that monologue she delivers in Barbie about the impossible double standards women are held to – would win.
Best supporting actor
Who will win: Robert Downey Jnr (Oppenheimer)
Up for his transformative turn as Atomic Energy Commissioner Lewis Strauss in Oppenheimer, Downey Jnr has been on the charm offensive, delivering entertaining speeches for his Bafta and Golden Globe wins.
And after previous nominations – for Chaplin and Tropic Thunder – this will cap a remarkable turnaround for Downey Jnr, going from one-time Hollywood pariah to Marvel’s Iron Man and now Oscars darling.
Who should win: Ryan Gosling (Barbie)
Gosling will perform “I’m Just Ken”, his song from Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, at the Oscars, a rendition everyone is gagging to see. But would it not be great if Gosling’s comic turn as Barbie’s paramour bagged an Oscar? It is a note-perfect performance, delivered without a shred of irony.
Best adapted screenplay
Who will win: Poor Things
Cunningly adapted from Alasdair Gray’s Victorian-set novel, Tony McNamara’s script is a fruity delight – filled with clever word play.
While Poor Things could well dominate technical categories, Academy voters will probably see crowning the script with an Oscar as the ideal chance to celebrate one of the year’s most idiosyncratic films.
Who should win: American Fiction
Taken from Percival Everett’s 2001 novel, about an academic who writes a novel deliberately pandering to black stereotypes, debut director Cord Jefferson’s screenplay is a brilliant, brave, on-the-nose satire – and screamingly funny.
Best original screenplay
Who will win: Anatomy of a Fall
Of its five Oscar nominations – remarkable for a non-English film – this is surely where the Academy will reward Justine Triet’s dense, beautifully constructed work.
Co-written with actor-writer-director Arthur Harari, Triet’s courtroom saga about a German woman accused of murdering her French husband is so dexterously penned, switching between French and English, it seems impossible to imagine anything besting it.
Who should win: Anatomy of a Fall
Best director
Who will win: Christopher Nolan (Oppenheimer)
This time, he has already taken the Golden Globe, the Bafta and the DGA (Directors Guild of America) best director prizes, making him odds on to claim the Oscar. Even mighty Martin Scorsese, notching up a record 10th nomination in the category (one more than Steven Spielberg), looks unlikely to derail Nolan.
Who should win: Jonathan Glazer (The Zone of Interest)
Glazer is the maverick outsider in the category, adapting Martin Amis’ Holocaust story in German and directing with absolute precision to create a definitive masterpiece.
Best animated feature
Who will win: The Boy and the Heron
Who should win: Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
Best international feature film
Who will win: The Zone of Interest
At the Baftas in London recently, the film found itself in the unusual position of winning the prizes for both best British film and best film not in the English language. This is certainly its best chance of Oscars glory.
Who should win: The Zone of Interest
