Every Oscar season turns film fans into amateur prognosticators, and the 98th Academy Awards on Sunday, March 15, look especially difficult to predict. Two original, critically praised and commercially successful films — Ryan Coogler’s Sinners and Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another — dominate the conversation, while many other categories remain wide open.
Sinners vs. One Battle After Another
Sinners leads the pack with a record 16 nominations, eclipsing the previous high of 14. Coogler, who rose from indie filmmaker to mainstream auteur, delivers a bold, personal genre piece set in 1932. Michael B. Jordan plays twin brothers Stack and Smoke, gangsters who return to the Jim Crow South and confront a supernatural menace in the form of Irish-immigrant vampires. The film mixes an examination of America’s racial violence and cultural appropriation with crowd-pleasing thrills and has earned more than $370 million worldwide — the biggest box-office performer in the Oscar race.
The film could produce landmark wins: Coogler may become the first Black director to claim best director, and producer Zinzi Coogler could make history as the first Black woman to take home a best picture statuette. Sinners also has the potential to approach or surpass the record for most Oscars won by a single film.
Despite its nomination haul, bookmakers give Sinners especially strong chances in a few categories — notably best original screenplay and the newly created best casting award — while many oddsmakers place One Battle After Another ahead for the ceremony’s top prizes.
Paul Thomas Anderson’s film arrived as the presumptive frontrunner after its fall debut. Adapted from Thomas Pynchon’s novel Vineland, it’s a freewheeling comedy-action-adventure that casts Leonardo DiCaprio as a washed-up revolutionary pulled back into action when his biracial daughter is kidnapped. The movie shifts between political satire and absurdist set pieces, portraying migrant camps, besieged sanctuary cities and a cartoonish domestic extremist movement. Anderson, who has 14 past nominations without a win, seems poised for a major night.
Other contenders such as Chloe Zhao’s Hamnet and Josh Safdie’s Marty Supreme remain in the mix, but neither appears likely to overtake the two frontrunners.
Acting races and the Chalamet backlash
Jessie Buckley’s portrayal of Agnes in Hamnet is widely viewed as the season’s most secure acting lock for best actress.
The best actor category, by contrast, has tightened. Timothée Chalamet had been a favorite after two earlier nominations, but a viral campaign misstep — comments that played down ballet and opera as art forms — produced backlash that may have cost him votes. Michael B. Jordan’s profile has risen as a result, and betting markets now favor him.
Supporting races could yield surprises. Sean Penn’s menacing turn in One Battle After Another faces veteran Stellan Skarsgård’s work in Sentimental Value. In best supporting actress, Amy Madigan (Weapons), Teyana Taylor (One Battle After Another) and Wunmi Mosaku (Sinners) form a competitive trio, each offering distinctive, transformative performances.
International features and studio dynamics
Sentimental Value, which dominated the European Film Awards, is the leading contender in best international feature, in a field that also includes Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just an Accident and Kleber Mendonça Filho’s The Secret Agent.
On the industry front, this year’s race leans toward the traditional studio system. Netflix is expected to pick up some technical awards for Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, and its surprise hit K Pop Demon Hunters is a likely contender for best animated feature and best original song with the chart-topping “Golden.” Still, Warner Bros., the studio behind both One Battle After Another and Sinners, looks positioned to be the night’s big winner unless an upset occurs.
A note of anxiety undercuts the celebratory mood. Warner Bros.’ expected dominance comes amid corporate shifts and continuing concerns about consolidation and the disruptive potential of artificial intelligence. Chalamet’s contemporaneous appeal to “keep movie theaters alive” — made in the same interview that produced his controversial comment — captures Hollywood’s unease about the industry’s future.
What to expect
With the marquee awards likely to split between two very different, inventive films and several categories genuinely wide open, the 98th Oscars could deliver historic firsts and unexpected upsets. Few results feel predetermined, making this year’s ceremony one of the more suspenseful in recent memory.