Nolan picked up his first Oscar nom for Best Director with his last effort, “Dunkirk,” which scored eight nominations and won tech Oscars for Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing, and Best Film Editing. The jury is still out on when Disney will release Oscar nominee Joe Wright’s Fox orphan “The Woman in the Window,” starring Amy Adams, or Searchlight’s “The Big Sick” director Michael Showalter’s “The Eyes of Tammy Faye,” starring Andrew Garfield and Jessica Chastain as televangelists Jim and Tammy Faye Baker. Cannes is such a major influence for the Best International Film Oscar (three of this year’s nominations were Cannes premieres) that its cancellation will surely impact the foreign-language race moving forward.The Oscar race will continue to take shape as the year progresses. It is used only for this category at the Oscars and asks voters to rank all 10 Best Picture nominees; the winner is the consensus choice. July 1, 2020: A look at the 2021 Academy Awards contenders for Best Picture based on the filmmakers, casts, writers, studio track records.
These films may be elevated during a time when theaters could remain closed in the fall and many expected contenders (see below) could get pushed.Christmas is also when MGM is launching “Respect,” starring Oscar winner Jennifer Hudson as Aretha Franklin. Indiewire.
Contenders are listed in alphabetical order. Emerging from Sundance 2020 was Eliza Hittman’s “Never Rarely Sometimes Always,” which won a Special Jury Prize in Park City before claiming the Silver Bear at February’s Berlin International Film Festival. Florian Zeller’s “The Father” (Sony Pictures Classics) is set for November and boasts towering performances from Olivia Colman and Anthony Hopkins.After Cannes comes the summer movie season, which has been mostly wiped clean because of the pandemic. Behold, an early set of predictions on who will will win at the 93rd Academy Awards The season’s other major tentpole is Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune,” set for December 17 from Warner Bros. Villeneuve’s “Blade Runner 2049” won Oscars for Best Cinematography and Best Visual Effects, and big-budget “Dune” with Timothee Chalamet should be another huge crafts contender.Listen to these IndieWire podcasts.Interviews with leading film and TV creators about their process and craft.The fall season is also expected to bring new efforts from Oscar-winning talents such as Steven Spielberg (“West Side Story,” December 18 from Disney), Aaron Sorkin (“Trial of the Chicago 7,” September 25 from Paramount), Tom McCarthy (“Stillwater,” November 6 from Focus), and Sofia Coppola (“On the Rocks,” undated from A24/Apple). 2021 Oscar Predictions: 93rd Academy Awards. Focus pivoted to a premium VOD launch on April 3.The majority of the fall movie season remains a question mark. Studio films “The Invisible Man” (Universal) and “The Way Back” (Warner Bros.) earned strong buzz for riveting lead performances by Elisabeth Moss and Ben Affleck, respectively. Those fall festival surprises might not happen depending on the shape the fall festivals take. Other buzzy films reportedly in the mix included Chloe Zhao’s “Nomadland” (Searchlight), Edgar Wright’s “Last Night in Soho” (Focus, September 25), Paul Verhoeven’s “Benedetta” (don’t forget Isabelle Huppert’s Oscar nod for “Elle,” which launched at Cannes 2016), Leos Carax’s musical “Annette” (Amazon) with Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s “Memoria” (Neon) with Tilda Swinton. A look at contenders for the 2021 Academy Awards nominations for Best Picture based on the filmmakers, casts, writers, studio track records. Stay tuned as IndieWire’s Anne Thompson breaks down the races in each category.