2025 Oscar Predictions: Can ‘Conclave’ Win Best Picture?

Edward Berger’s directorial master class Conclave dropped in theaters this weekend on a fairly wide release. That means that ticket buyers finally have the chance to see it and weigh in on its adult-geared entertainment. I’ve been anxiously awaiting this moment as Conclave‘s fortune out in the “real world” (i.e the non-festival world) will help create a narrative that will support or plague it all the way to the Oscar nominations on Friday, January 17.

The thing about watching films at a film festival is that reactions are often wildly different than reactions you’d see out in the real world. The film festival environment is a carefully cultured, nearly bespoke experience. At least at the film festivals I’ve attended, audiences are typically middle aged, affluent, and white. It’s often said some festivals are perfect representations of the Academy’s general tastes. I think that was probably true until recently when the Academy opened their membership up to a whole newly international and culturally diverse group. I’m not exactly sure how aligned The New Academy is with the film festival circuit.

Conclave premiered at the Telluride Film Festival where it was very warmly received. It was also seen at the Toronto International Film Festival before sharing the audience award at the Middleburg Film Festival (with September 5). Festival audiences embraced the film, and that response makes total sense. It’s the kind of film — a literary adaptation — that should be met with broad appeal. It’s brilliantly acted, engagingly paced, and packed with marvelous below the line crafts, particularly the recreation of the Sistine Chapel.

It has all of the ear-marks of a potential Best Picture winner, but can it go the distance?

Certainly, several on X seem to think so. There’s even a picture floating around (which I’ve seen but cannot find) of two guys attending in priests robes.

Reactions range from the ecstatic…

…to the “it’s good, but calm down…”

… to the “it touched a nerve, and we’re going to mercilessly attack it,” including spoil the ending (which I will not post).

With most of the reactions trending extremely positive, I was actually slightly surprised that Conclave‘s opening weekend Cinemascore grade was a “B+.” That feels low to me as my experience with the film (both online and in the festival circuit) was more positive and more representative of something in the “A” range. While certainly the Cinemascore grade isn’t totally indicative of a film’s ability to win Best Picture, I think it points to a potential problem for the film: that ending.

I won’t spoil it for you here. You can certainly find it online as it is faithful to the original Robert Harris novel, but it does elicit gasps and laughs along the way. Are those laughs of incredulity? Are those laughs of nervous excitement? Are those laughs reacting to Cardinal Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) exhausted and disbelieving reactions that close the film? Any of those could be true. The trick is finding out which way the Academy will lean. We know they’re certainly not afraid of awarding a Catholic-critical film the top prize (see: Spotlight), but Conclave is a brutally efficient entertainment. It lacks the emotional depth or “gravitas” traditionally reserved for most Best Pictures. Certainly, Spotlight had both of those things in spades with a traditional narrative of journalists doing the right thing.

Conclave‘s only resonance deals with a handful of lines pointing to American elections that are played for easy (nervous) laughs.

Box office-wise, Conclave‘s story has yet to be written. A relatively inexpensive film at $20 million, it slightly exceeded early tracking by grossing $6.6 million at around 1,700 screens. This one isn’t a major opening weekend venture. Rather, the target audiences will seek it out over the next few weeks, likely leading into the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, before playing extremely well on home streaming. That’s where the Academy will likely take in the film over the Christmas holidays. It’s the kind of film that used to win Best Picture all the time — one that voters could sit their family in front of and everyone would at least like it. It’s a consensus title.

Thing is, right now, it doesn’t have the BUZZ of a winner. People seem to generally like it, but it’s not driving a passion vote, which lately tends to prevail more times than not.

What film has that passion movement at the moment? I would argue only one film has it right now: Sean Baker’s Anora. It opened in limited release with the highest per-screen box office average since last year’s Asteroid City. It also has one of the top five per-screen averages of the last five years. Included in that company is the Oscar-winning Parasite.

When you talk to people about Conclave, they respect really like it. When you talk to people about Anora, they LOVE it. They want to tell their friends about it. They can’t wait to see it again.

That may be the new key to winning Best Picture in the era of the New Academy. It isn’t about the common consensus anymore. It’s about jumping on a bandwagon of the film everyone is talking about. Parasite. Everything Everywhere All At Once. CODA. Oppenheimer. All of those films built on the passion vote, the “stand up and applaud” mentality.

Conclave, as great as it is, probably doesn’t have that going for it, which puts Anora slightly ahead right now.

That said, here are my top ten in contention for Best Picture:

1. Anora
2. Conclave
3. The Brutalist
4. Gladiator II
5. Emilia Pérez
6. A Real Pain
7. Dune: Part Two
8. Sing Sing
9. Blitz
10. September 5