Oscars 2022: Best Picture Predictions

With Cannes and the fall festivals in the rearview, the 2021-2022 season brought a feast, as studios (finally!) unleashed their best stuff for the big screen. But the new box office isn’t the old box office, and with less time in theaters, movies don’t have the same cultural impact. Movies with big budgets and established stars are adapting to the multi-platform universe: Studios and streamers spent heavily on costly spectacles that were often available online at the same time as theaters, or shortly after release. Did that make a day-and-date sci-fi epic like “Dune” feel less special? That is the question.

Denis Villeneuve’s visual spectacular delivered over time, tallying a robust $398 million worldwide: “Dune” has powerful support from Academy voters. But discovery and specialty titles found it harder to break through without longer theater play. More than ever, their distributors relied on festivals, media, and critics to play an enhanced role. When it comes to making it all the way to Best Picture, it’s all about creating a must-see event.

And there will be a guaranteed 10 of those this year — which opens up the field to more adventurous choices. While ABC is rooting for a global blockbuster like “Spider-Man: No Way Home” to gain a Best Picture slot, the preferential ballot could allow more smaller movies to move up in the rankings even if they aren’t ranked first. There’s late-breaking heat building for Maggie Gyllenhaal’s “The Lost Daughter” (Netflix) and Joel Coen’s “The Tragedy of Macbeth” (A24/AppleTV+) for example.

Festivals and critics always boost would-be Oscar players. Sian Heder’s $25-million AppleTV+ Sundance pickup, heart-tugging deaf family drama “CODA” is gaining traction with its SAG ensemble and Troy Kotsur Supporting Actor nominations. Also launched on the fall festival circuit were SAG Ensemble nominees “King Richard” (November 19, Warner Bros.), Reinaldo Marcus Green’s sports saga about the Williams sisters, starring Golden Globe-winner Will Smith as their driven father, and Oscar-nominated multi-hyphenate Kenneth Branagh’s 1969 Northern Ireland drama “Belfast” (November 12, Focus), starring Jamie Dornan and Caitriona Balfe as a couple caught up in The Troubles. Landing three acting nods but not Ensemble at SAG, Oscar-nominated Jane Campion (“The Piano”) won Best Director at Venice and at the Golden Globes for ’20s western “The Power of the Dog” (December 24, Netflix), starring Benedict Cumberbatch as a Montana rancher in conflict with his brother (Jesse Plemons). And debuting at Telluride was Joe Wright’s lush period stage-to-screen musical “Cyrano” (December 25, MGM), which stars Peter Dinklage and Haley Bennett.

Will Smith in “King Richard”

Anne Marie Fox

James Bond movies are often relegated to tech categories and don’t tend to register in the Best Picture race, but Cary Joji Fukunaga’s moving “No Time to Die” (October 8, MGM/UA) marks Daniel Craig’s ultimate outing as Agent 007. More likely to be a Best Picture frontrunner is Denis Villeneuve’s $165-million space epic “Dune” (October 22, Warner Bros./HBO Max), which should ride stunning visuals and a starry ensemble led by Oscar Isaac, Rebecca Ferguson, and Timothée Chalamet to multiple nominations. With the box-office disappointment of Jon M. Chu’s adaptation of the Lin-Manuel Miranda Broadway musical “In the Heights,” eyes are on Miranda’s directing debut, Jonathan Larson musical “Tick, Tick, Boom” (November 19, Netflix) starring Andrew Garfield — as well as Steven Spielberg’s $100-million update of the theater and film classic “West Side Story” (December 10, Disney), starring breakouts Mike Faist and Ariana DeBose, which disappointed at the box office with a total $60.5 million worldwide.

Many stars are doing double duty in this crowded year. Chalamet boasts three potential movies in the Best Picture race: Besides “Dune” there’s Wes Anderson’s Francophile anthology “The French Dispatch.” In 2015, Anderson’s “The Grand Budapest Hotel” scored nine Oscar nominations and won four tech Oscars; this Cannes premiere is also likely to play well with the crafts.

“Don’t Look Up”

NIKO TAVERNISE/NETFLIX

Chalamet also turns up in “The Big Short” Oscar-winner Adam McKay’s hugely popular “Don’t Look Up” (December, Netflix), a scorching end-of-the-world satire starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence as anxious scientists trying to prepare the planet for a comet strike. Oscar-winners Frances McDormand and Denzel Washington play the ultimate power couple in solo-flier Joel Coen’s black-and-white New York Film Festival opener “The Tragedy of Macbeth” (A24/Apple TV+). Coen and his brother Ethan won Oscars for “Fargo” (Best Original Screenplay) along with Joel’s wife McDormand (Best Actress), and the Coens took home Best Picture for “No Country for Old Men.”

Cate Blanchett and Bradley Cooper play a pair of con artists in Oscar-winner Guillermo del Toro’s noirish remake “Nightmare Alley” (December 3, Searchlight). And Cooper could add a Supporting Actor Oscar nod to his SAG nomination as noxious Jon Peters in eight-time-nominee Paul Thomas Anderson’s ’70s comedy “Licorice Pizza” (November 26, 2021, MGM/UA), starring discovery Alana Haim, an L.A. musician, and Philip Seymour Hoffman’s son Cooper Hoffman as two mismatched kindred spirits.

“Licorice Pizza”

MGM

Ridley Scott will seek an Oscar win for his own ’70s saga, SAG Ensemble nominee “House of Gucci” (November 24, MGM), a mainstream family melodrama co-starring scene-stealers Lady Gaga and Jared Leto, if not for the better-reviewed $100-million Medieval action drama “The Last Duel” (October 8, Disney) which topped out $30.5 million at the global box office.

Writer-director Aaron Sorkin (“The Trial of the Chicago 7”) returns to the Oscar race with another slice-of-life drama laced with comedy, “Being the Ricardos” (Amazon), focused on one intense week behind the scenes as “I Love Lucy” producer-stars Lucille Ball (Golden Globe-winner Nicole Kidman) and her husband Desi Arnaz (fellow SAG nominee Javier Bardem) try to keep their marriage and their popular sitcom intact.

Another Oscar perennial, Guillermo del Toro (Best Picture-winner “The Shape of Water”) returns with well-mounted noir remake “Nightmare Alley” (Searchlight), starring Bradley Cooper as a man with a murky past who falls in love with a fellow carney (Rooney Mara) and becomes a successful mind-reader — until a psychotherapist femme fatale (Cate Blanchett) and a ruthless powermonger (Richard Jenkins) change his luck for the worse. While Blanchett scored a SAG nomination, and Oscar-friendly Searchlight should never be underestimated, the hardboiled film’s strongest supporters are the crafts.

Per usual, contenders for ten Best Picture slots are listed in alphabetical order. Only movies I’ve seen can be deemed frontrunners.

Frontrunners
“Belfast”
“CODA”
“Don’t Look Up”
“Dune”
“King Richard”
“Licorice Pizza”
“The Lost Daughter”
“The Power of the Dog”
“The Tragedy of Macbeth”
“West Side Story”

Contenders
“Being the Ricardos”
“House of Gucci”
“No Time to Die”
“Nightmare Alley”
“Parallel Mothers”
“Tick, Tick, Boom”

Longshots
“Cyrano”
“The French Dispatch”
“The Last Duel”
“Spider-Man: No Way Home”