Here at Prestige Junkie, we firmly believe that it’s always Oscar season. So even in the midst of this fairly quiet week in Hollywood, with Emmy nominations around the corner and the fall festivals still nearly two months away, my colleague Christopher Rosen and I are doing what feels only sensible: a midyear Oscar buzz check-in.
Because if we’ve learned anything from Sinners, Everything Everywhere All at Once and every Cannes hit that’s broken into best picture in recent years, getting people talking about your movie in the first half of the year is actually a great path to Oscar success. This year, the obvious champ of that category is Project Hail Mary, a springtime box office smash and optimistic sci-fi epic that, as Chris and I discuss, is poised to come back big time for a fall and winter Oscar campaign. We’re also keeping our eye on other hits from the spring and early summer — like the Michael Jackson biopic Michael and even Focus’ surprise horror smash Obsession, which can now point to Sinners and Weapons as evidence that Academy voters really have gotten over their historical aversion to horror movies.
We get into the Cannes of it all too, wondering how Palme d’Or winner Fjord might continue Neon’s impressive Oscar streak and if buzzy festival titles like A24’s Club Kid, Netflix’s La Bola Negra and Neon’s Paper Tiger can hang in there once the fall titles reveal themselves. We also indulge in a lot of pure speculation about what’s ahead, including whether The Odyssey can live up to the enormous Oscar expectations of Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer and how Luca Guadagnino’s Artificial, recently dumped by Amazon-MGM, might still find its way into the race after all.
So yes, even though the Ankler Pundits page is now all about Emmys, we have plenty of foolishly early Oscar predictions to share. Take a listen to today’s episode of the podcast, and stay tuned next week as Chris and I regroup to make our final predictions for this year’s Emmy nominations, which will be announced on July 8. See ya then!
