The 2025 Academy Awards Nominations

I don't like the term “snub” when it comes to films and people bypassed for Academy Awards – or any awards, for that matter. It seems incredibly unlikely that, with private ballots cast by hundreds or thousands of participants, large factions would secretly unite to ensure that, say, a former Baywatch star didn't make a splashy Oscars comeback, or that a $1.3-billion Marvel smash wouldn't be in the running for shiny trophies to match its box office. Some movies and individuals simply got more votes than others. End of story.

If, however, I were the sort who randomly tossed the word “snub” around, I might have a question for those responsible for this morning's nominees for the 97th Oscars: What do you have against Zendaya?!

[Scroll past the commentary for the full lineup of nominees for the March 2 Oscars, with my correct predictions in boldface.]

For what it's worth, and to get the tooting of my own horn out of the way early, I managed a personal best in this year's prognosticating: a five-for-five match in seven categories, and 87 correct guesses among 105 nominations. Sure, that's only an 82-percent “B” average. Given that “C-plus”es are more in line with tradition, though, I'll happily take it. Still, seven of my 18 misses came from mistakenly forecasting nods for Zendaya movies, as I expected that eight would go to Dune Part: Two, which merely wound up with five, and four would go to Challengers, which wound up with zero. I suppose I get the relatively lackluster support for the massive sci-fi hit – March release, second part of a trilogy – and Denis Villeneuve's followup did nab a Best Picture citation to go with its four tech nominations. But a goose egg for the sports-melodrama hit that's also my 2024 favorite? A film that should have won the Oscar for Original Score, if not also Film Editing? I'm repeating “It's not a snub, it's not a snub …” like a mantra, but that dissing's gonna sting all day.

While Zendaya may not have had much reason to celebrate this morning (though I suppose any day you wake up as Zendaya is an awfully good day), you can't say the same for plenty of others, principally those associated with the French-produced, largely Spanish-language musical drama Emilia Pérez. What a showing this one made! Thirteen nominations, one shy of tying the all-time record; the most Oscars attention ever awarded to a foreign-language title, with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Roma sharing the previous record of 10; and the most nods ever netted by a single Netflix release, surpassing The Power of the Dog's 12 in 2022. For her role as the titular gangster-made-good, Best Actress nominee Karla Sofía Gascón became the first openly transgender performer up for an acting Oscar. And also receiving her first Academy Awards acknowledgment, Zoe Saldaña scored her expected bid for Supporting Actress, and is the clear front-runner in her category one year after fellow Marvel superhero Robert Downey Jr. won his supporting race for Oppenheimer. Anticipating Oscars 2026, Chris Hemsworth's agents must be thrilled.

Trailing a bit behind Emilia Pérez, Brady Corbet's almost-four-hours-with-intermission immigrant epic The Brutalist – opening at Davenport's Last Picture House and Cinemark theaters in a matter of hours! – scored 10 nods, landing recognition for all three of its central performers: Adrien Brody (his first Academy recognition since winning Best Actor for The Pianist in 2003), Felicity Jones (last cited for The Theory of Everything in 2015), and, at long last, first-time contender Guy Pearce. Wicked tied with The Brutalist at 10, scoring loads of tech mentions – plus the anticipated nominations for co-stars Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande – but losing a bit of its possible-Picture-champ mojo by blanking on Directing and Adapted Screenplay.

The expected-to-do-somewhat-better papal-ascendancy hit Conclave netted eight nods, a thoroughly decent haul slightly upended by Edward Berger missing a Directing nod two seasons after not hearing his name read for the nine-times-nominated/four-times-winning All Quiet on the Western Front. Thirty years after his feature debut, however, A Complete Unknown's James Mangold finally did hear his name read among Directing contenders, his biographical musical, like Conclave, ultimately receiving eight mentions, three of them for the actors playing Bob Dylan (Timothée Chalamet), Pete Seeger (Edward Norton), and Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro). Maybe Hemsworth should be eyeballing a Leonard Cohen bio-pic.

Although its haul of six was less than half of Emilia Pérez's, Team Anora has to be feeling pretty swell today. Sean Baker's Cannes-winning comedy scored all six nominations it had a reasonable shot at, and Baker himself is a rare four-time contender cited for Picture (where a film's producers get the recognition), Directing, Screenplay, and Film Editing, the latter putting him among an elite group of previously nominated directors-who-edit that includes James Cameron, Alfonso Cuarón, and the Coen brothers. As mentioned, Dune: Part Two landed five nods, as did Coralie Fargeat's gruesome satire The Substance, a major victory for the body-horror genre, female filmmakers – Fargeat is only the ninth woman ever to crash the Oscars' traditionally male Best Directing party – and star Demi Moore, who's now well on her way toward an ultimate Best Actress victory. Many presumed that Substance co-star Margaret Qualley would also be recognized, but alas, not this year. Guess that “You Are One” business wasn't true, after all.

Joining the eight aforementioned titles in the Best Picture race were a moderate surprise and, if you're in the business of Oscars-predicting, a huge, unanticipated, dumbfounding surprise. The moderate one was RaMell Ross' sensational reform-school drama Nickel Boys, which was starting to look like an also-ran given its slights by the Producers Guild of America, the Screen Actors Guild, and the British Academy of Film & Television Awards. Happily, however, Academy voters found room for Ross' visually audacious achievement, also awarding it a richly deserved Adapted Screenplay nod.

Yet the category's biggest shocker – the morning's biggest shocker – was the inclusion of director Walter Salles' Brazilian drama I'm Still Here. Most everyone expected the film's inclusion in the International Feature race, which happened, and after her Golden Globes win for Actress in a Drama, smarter pundits than I correctly predicted that Fernanda Torres would make the obscenely competitive Best Actress lineup. (Torres is only the second Brazilian performer ever cited in that category, the first being her mother Fernanda Montenegro for 1998's Central Station … which was also directed by Salles. So much synchronicity/synergy there!) But I think it's safe to say that no one saw a Best Picture nomination coming for this subtitled dramatic thriller that, to my knowledge, hasn't even enjoyed a wide-enough release to make it to Iowa City yet. Truth be told, I didn't have I'm Still Here on my list of top 20 Best Picture possibilities, assuming that even wholly ignored titles such as Hard Truths, The Room Next Door, and All We Imagine as Light had far better odds. So let's hear it for the Brazilians! Maybe, prior to March 2, we Midwestern Oscars completists will even get to see their film!

Beyond that left-field Best Picture contender, the surprises were minimal when the charmingly paired Rachel Sennott and Bowen Yang announced this year's class of '25, with Yang doing an impeccable job reading the names of Emilia Pérez's four cited screenplay nominees and making me smile by pronouncing Live-Action Short contender A Lien as Alien. (To be fair, that two-word title was incorrectly placed first among the category's alphabetical listings ... and Yang was reading from a teleprompter at 5:30 a.m.) Still, there was an eyebrow raised here and there. As Sennott amusingly noted, beyond the inclusions of Alien: Romulus and the Dune sequel, the Visual Effects category found room for no fewer than three films featuring CGI monkeys: Wicked, Better Man, and Rise of the Planet of the Apes. (Even some of us who correctly predicted those five – insert back pat – hadn't made that connection.) Flow became only the second film, after 2021's Flee, nominated for both International and Animated Feature, continuing that superb Latvian entertainment's escalating threat to win the animated race over long-presumed front-runner The Wild Robot. (Dreamworks' smash hit, though, had a fine morning, too, also nabbing Original Score and Sound nods.) Sebastian Stan, whose 2024 two-fer of The Apprentice and A Different Man threatened to leave him out of the Best Actor race entirety, found favor with the former, receiving mention for his Donald Trump alongside Supporting Actor contender Jeremy Strong's Roy Cohn. Let the angry tweets commence!

And can we talk about the amazing goings-on in Best Actress? Yes, Gascón is the first openly trans performer cited and Torres the category's second-ever Brazilian. (After her mom! A quarter-century ago!) But check this out. With Gascón and Torres both contending, this is the first time in 48 years that any acting category has boasted more than one foreign-language performance. With Gascón and Erivo, this is the first time in 61 years that Best Actress has included two performances in musicals. An equally astonishing, far more mortifying stat finds Erivo only the second Black actress, after Viola Davis, to be nominated for Best Actress more than once. (Erivo, the star of 2019's Harriet Tubman drama Harriet, is also the first British Black actress to receive multiple acting citations.) This is the first time since 1978 that all five Best Actress nominees are in Best Picture nominees. And this is the first time in Academy Awards history that four of the five contenders come from movies that, at least according to the Golden Globes, would be classified as comedies or musicals. That's a helluva lot of Oscars history made in one category … and doesn't even include the Fernandas being only the fifth-ever pairing of a mother and daughter who were both, in different years, recipients of acting nominations. (Add Conclave's Supporting Actress contender Isabella Rossellini following in mom Ingrid Bergman's footsteps and we've now got six such pairings. Let's hear it for Nepo Babies!)

So congrats to all! And in closing – determined as I am not to end on a whiny note about perceived egregious slights regarding, for starters, Hard Truths' Marianne Jean-Baptiste and Nickel Boys' cinematographer Jomo Fray – here's what I'm personally celebrating. Three nods for Sing Sing, which aren't enough, but easily could've been fewer! The first Best Directing lineup composed entirely of first-timers in 27 years! The Animated Short category again delivering the year's funniest title: Yuck! (That's the title, not a personal reaction.) Another Succession showdown for Jeremy Strong and Kieran Culkin! The return, after 19 years, of Wallace and Gromit! Demi Moore, dammit! And, as expected by everyone, the 16th Original Song nomination, and eighth in row, for composer Dianne Warren, who managed the seemingly impossible with her cited tune from The Six Triple Eight: She secured an Oscar nomination for a Tyler Perry film. “The Journey” indeed.

BEST PICTURE

Anora

The Brutalist

A Complete Unknown

Conclave

Dune: Part Two

Emilia Pérez

I'm Still Here

Nickel Boys

The Substance

Wicked

BEST DIRECTING

Sean Baker, Anora

Brady Corbet, The Brutalist

James Mangold, A Complete Unknown

Jacques Audiard, Emilia Pérez

Coralie Fargeat, The Substance

BEST ACTRESS

Cynthia Erivo, Wicked

Karla Sofía Gascón, Emilia Pérez

Mikey Madison, Anora

Demi Moore, The Substance

Fernanda Torres, I'm Still Here

BEST ACTOR

Adrien Brody, The Brutalist

Timothée Chalamet, A Complete Unknown

Colman Domingo, Sing Sing

Ralph Fiennes, Conclave

Sebastian Stan, The Apprentice

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Monica Barbaro, A Complete Unknown

Ariana Grande, Wicked

Felicity Jones, The Brutalist

Isabella Rossellini, Conclave

Zoe Saldaña, Emilia Pérez

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Yura Borisov, Anora

Kieran Culkin, A Real Pain

Edward Norton, A Complete Unknown

Guy Pearce, The Brutalist

Jeremy Strong, The Apprentice

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

Anora, Sean Baker

The Brutalist, Brady Corbet, Mona Fastvold

A Real Pain, Jesse Eisenberg

September 5, Moritz Binder, Alex Davis, Tim Fehlbaum

The Substance, Coralie Fargeat

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

A Complete Unknown, Jay Cocks, James Mangold

Conclave, Peter Straughan

Emilia Pérez, Jacques Audiard, Thomas Bidegain, Nicolas Livecchi, Léa Mysius

Nickel Boys, Joslyn Barnes, RaMell Ross

Sing Sing, Clint Bentley, Greg Kwedar, Clarence Maclin, John "Divine G" Whitfield

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE

Flow

Inside Out 2

Memoir of a Snail

Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl

The Wild Robot

BEST ORIGINAL SONG

Elton John: Never Too Late, “Never Too Late”

Emilia Pérez, “El Mal”

Emilia Pérez, “Mi Camino”

Sing Sing, “Like a Bird”

The Six Triple Eight, “The Journey”

BEST INTERNATIONAL FEATURE FILM

Emilia Pérez, France

Flow, Latvia

The Girl with the Needle, Denmark

I'm Still Here, Brazil

The Seed of the Sacred Fig, Germany

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE FILM

Black Box Diaries

No Other Land

Porcelain War

Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat

Sugarcane

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

The Brutalist

Dune: Part Two

Emilia Pérez

Maria

Nosferatu

BEST FILM EDITING

Anora

The Brutalist

Conclave

Emilia Pérez

Wicked

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN

The Brutalist

Conclave

Dune: Part Two

Nosferatu

Wicked

BEST COSTUME DESIGN

A Complete Unknown

Conclave

Gladiator II

Nosferatu

Wicked

BEST SOUND

A Complete Unknown

Dune: Part Two

Emilia Pérez

Wicked

The Wild Robot

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE

The Brutalist

Conclave

Emilia Pérez

Wicked

The Wild Robot

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS

Alien: Romulus

Better Man

Dune: Part Two

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes

Wicked

BEST MAKEUP & HAIRSTYLING

A Different Man

Emilia Pérez

Nosferatu

The Substance

Wicked

BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT FILM

Death by Numbers

I Am Ready, Warden

Incident

Instruments of a Beating Heart

The Only Girl in the Orchestra

BEST LIVE-ACTION SHORT FILM

Anuja

I'm Not a Robot

The Last Ranger

A Lien

The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent

BEST ANIMATED SHORT FILM

Beautiful Men

In the Shadow of the Cypress

Magic Candies

Wander to Wonder

Yuck!

Total Number of Nominations

Emilia Pérez – 13

The Brutalist – 10

Wicked – 10

A Complete Unknown – 8

Conclave – 8

Anora – 6

Dune: Part Two – 5

The Substance – 5

Nosferatu – 4

I'm Still Here – 3

Sing Sing – 3

The Wild Robot – 3

The Apprentice – 2

Flow – 2

Nickel Boys – 2

A Real Pain – 2

Alien: Romulus – 1

Better Man – 1

Black Box Diaries – 1

A Different Man – 1

Elton John: Never Too Late – 1

The Girl with the Needle – 1

Gladiator II – 1

Inside Out 2 – 1

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes – 1

Maria – 1

Memoir of a Snail – 1

No Other Land – 1

Porcelain War – 1

The Seed of the Sacred Fig – 1

September 5 – 1

The Six Triple Eight – 1

Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat – 1

Sugarcane – 1

Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl – 1