🎧 Oscars 2026: Irresponsible Predictions!
Dozens of top auteurs — PTA to Spike Lee to Edward Berger (again!) — will be in contention, not to mention Chalamet playing ping-pong
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If anyone tries to tell you with a straight face that they can already predict next year’s Oscar winners, please do not believe them. Yes, that is in theory what I’m doing on this week’s episode of the Prestige Junkie podcast, reuniting with This Had Oscar Buzz co-hosts Joe Reid and Chris Feil to look over the wide range of movies that await us later this year. But as much as films from directors like Paul Thomas Anderson, Chloé Zhao and Luca Guadagnino might seem like safe bets, and as confident as we feel that actors like Colin Farrell and Jessie Buckley have big years ahead, nothing is ever guaranteed. Just go ask anyone if they thought this time last year — or even after his Palme d’Or win at Cannes — that Sean Baker would finally have his Oscar breakthrough thanks to a movie about a foul-mouthed sex worker.
That uncertainty, however, is absolutely the fun of this project, which Joe and I have done together for many years, now roping Chris in for the first time. Early in 2024, for instance, Joe had a hunch that Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu might become an oddball Christmas hit; it did just that, and earned four Oscar nominations to boot. Meanwhile I took a flyer on a prediction that Conclave would win best picture, and depending on how much stock you put in that film’s SAG Award win for best ensemble, it may have come very close.
Unlike the strike-impacted past two years, the 2025 calendar is full of major works from major directors. Anderson is collaborating with Leonardo DiCaprio for the first time on a Warner Bros. project — set for an Aug. 8 release and tentatively titled One Battle After Another — which Chris, Joe and I all hope might represent a breakthrough moment for co-star Regina Hall. Zhao has technically already released her follow-up to best picture winner Nomadland with the Marvel effort Eternals, but her adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s acclaimed novel Hamnet, starring Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley, might put her right back in the Oscar conversation. And Guadagnino, fresh off releasing both Challengers and Queer last year, teams up with Julia Roberts for the college campus-set drama After the Hunt (Oct. 10), which also reunites Guadagnino with his Call Me By Your Name star Michael Stuhlbarg.
There are also new movies coming from Ari Aster, both Josh and Benny Safdie (working separately for the first time), Boots Riley, Bradley Cooper, Celine Song, Darren Aronofsky, David Lowery, Edgar Wright, Guillermo del Toro, James Cameron, Jim Jarmusch, Kathryn Bigelow, Kelly Reichard, Lynne Ramsay, Noah Baumbach, Paul Greengrass, Rian Johnson, Richard Linklater, Ryan Coogler, Spike Lee, Yorgos Lanthimos and even the 84-year-old James L. Brooks.
Many of the people behind this year’s Oscar nominees will also be right back at it, including the Sing Sing team of Clint Bentley and Greg Kwedar, whose Train Dreams was already a Sundance hit, and Conclave director Edward Berger, with Ballad of a Small Player for Netflix. Timothée Chalamet, Felicity Jones, Guy Pearce, Demi Moore and Colman Domingo are all following up their recent Oscar nominations with promising new performances — though the winner for most intriguing gamble might be Chalamet, whose movie with Josh Safdie is about, of all things, competitive ping-pong.
It’s a lot to keep track of, but we try to keep it as straightforward as possible in the episode, which ends with us making wildly irresponsible predictions for what will win best picture a year from now. Right or wrong, we’ll be back next March to tell you how we did.