A (Adrien) to Z (Zoe): Oscar Stars' Next Moves
No rest for the winners! I suss out the big actors' and directors' follow-ups
It’s been four days now since the 97th Academy Awards, and most sensible people — even within Hollywood — have probably moved on. But surely I can’t be the only one who wants to dwell a bit longer on this year’s show, with its deserving winners and the highest ratings of the post-pandemic era. To feel great about the majority of an evening’s Oscar winners is something you do not take for granted if you lived through the Crash years, believe me.
I’m also still lingering on the final moments of Conan O’Brien’s opening monologue, sandwiched between his bit with Adam Sandler and the sandworm from Dune playing chopsticks on the piano. You can see it around the 14:30 mark in this video:
It’s a risky thing for a host to announce he’s going to change the subject while the audience is still laughing, but Conan pulled it off beautifully. “In moments such as this, any awards show can seem self-indulgent and superfluous,” he said, just after acknowledging the Los Angeles wildfires. “But what I want to do is have us all remember why we gather here tonight.”
He went on to emphasize the power of the Oscars to honor the hard-working, often anonymous crafts people of Hollywood, a theme repeated throughout the night with extended tributes to the costume and cinematography nominees. And though broad promises about the magic of the movies are boilerplate for any Oscar host, Conan delivered his with some extra oomph — or maybe just the nervous energy of someone who knew he was about to immediately pivot again and perform a musical number.
“For almost a century we have paused every spring to elevate and celebrate an art form that has the power at its very best to unite us,” Conan said, making the Oscars sound more like an ancient pagan ritual than industry conference. “Next year and in the years to come, through trauma and joy, this seemingly absurd ritual is going to be here,” he continued.
“But the magic, the madness, the grandeur and the joy of film worldwide is going to be with us forever.”
I’m thinking about pinning that quote somewhere above my desk, as a reminder in those moments when the silliness of awards season threatens to overwhelm its very real purpose. It’s easy to feel inspired by awards season on Oscar night, when you watch Sean Baker reap an incredible reward for years spent in the indie trenches, or Kieran Culkin emotionally thank the manager who has supported his career for decades. It’s a little harder when you’re watching your tenth Q&A at a regional film festival, or even for me last week, when I was explaining for the hundredth time why I thought Anora would beat Conclave for best picture and never wanted to talk about either movie again.
The ridiculous and the sublime: That’s Hollywood, and that was this year’s Oscars, one of the best shows we’ve seen in maybe a decade. Everyone involved in this year’s season now gets to take a breath, and the lucky winners get to clear some shelf space. But then, as Conan said, the work continues.
For some of this year’s winners and nominees the work is continuing sooner than others. Today I’ve got a rundown of what to expect next from some of this year’s top contenders — and which ones may could find themselves seated in the Dolby Theatre this time next year. Sorry guys, maybe don’t put the tux in cold storage just yet.
Sean Baker
Sunday’s big winner has promised repeatedly throughout the season that he will continue making films in his own way. He told me back in February that one of his few regrets about Anora’s miracle run is that it’s given him less time to work with other filmmakers on their projects, though at least one ought to be seen by audiences soon. Baker is the co-writer and editor of the upcoming film Left-Handed Girl from director Shih-Ching Tsou, with whom he co-directed Take Out way back in 2004. He’s been working on finishing that film throughout the Anora awards campaign, and since it’s hard to imagine any festival in the world turning down Baker’s next project, Left-Handed Girl, a family drama centered on a night market in Taipei, seems very likely to have a festival premiere sometime this year.
He’s also said he wants to get his next film “up and running ASAP,” and teased that whatever he has in mind “might have a Jonathan Demme feel.” Given that Demme directed loose comedies in the spirit of Anora but also The Silence of the Lambs, there is truly no telling what Baker might mean.
Mikey Madison
A minor rising star primarily known for the Scream franchise before Anora came calling, Madison was clear even before she became an Oscar winner that she wanted to take her time before deciding what was next. There’s a rumor she has an offer from a new Colleen Hoover adaptation, but it’s likely she has an offer from every project in development.
Working with Baker, she said earlier this year, “really changed the way that I want to make movies, and really changed how I want to feel when I'm working on something. I'm really just chasing this, I don't know, this very specific feeling, this joy.”
Adrien Brody
In the 20-ish years between Brody’s two Oscar wins, his credits consisted largely of unloved and forgotten films big and small — Hollywoodland, Septembers of Shiraz, Bullet Head — interrupted by the occasional Wes Anderson project. He was on a bit of an upswing in the years leading up to The Brutalist, thanks largely to TV projects like Poker Face, Winning Time, and a memorable guest turn on Succession.
Brody’s next few projects will most likely continue that sense of a comeback tour — he’s got The Bookie and the Bruiser, from Bone Tomahawk director S. Craig Zahler, on his IMDb page, as well as a historical drama called Emperor. It seems safe to assume he’s gotten higher-profile offers since the Brutalist buzz began — he reportedly met with Damien Chazelle about a role in the director’s upcoming Evel Knievel biopic — but he hasn’t yet committed to anything. His first big follow-up to The Pianist was a showy supporting turn in M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village, and it’s fascinating to imagine him doing the 2025 equivalent of that kind of work with a hot up-and-coming director.
Zoe Saldaña
The Emilia Pérez star, having demonstrated an uncanny ability to navigate scandal on the campaign trail, might find herself a valuable commodity in both Emmy and Oscar season this year. Her Taylor Sheridan-backed Paramount+ series Lioness, which co-stars Nicole Kidman, is in the Emmy hunt for its second season that premiered last fall. (If you had polled the Dolby Theatre on Sunday night, how many people would even know that there’s a Saldaña-Kidman show out there??) And Saldaña will be back in blue in December for Avatar: Fire and Ash, plus two more Avatar movies after that. Saldaña has never gotten the awards attention she deserves for her motion-capture work in those film, and I don’t expect it to change this time — but maybe she’ll at least get a bit more consideration, now that she’s officially in the Oscar club.
Kieran Culkin
Culkin missed a handful of awards season events because he’s been in New York in rehearsals for a new production of Glengarry Glen Ross, which begins performances March 10. Given that A Real Pain was one of only two film roles he’s taken on since his breakout work on Succession, and that he’s talked openly about how much he missed his family while on the Polish set of A Real Pain, I wouldn’t expect him to leap into a major production any time soon. That goes double if his wife Jazz Charton takes him up on his onstage request for more children.
Gints Zilbalodis
Like Sean Baker, the Latvian director of Flow has spent much of this awards season talking about how eager he is to get back to making his own independent films. Based on an Instagram post from February, he’s already well on his way.
