2025 Oscars: Giving Thanks To a Year Without an Undeniable Frontrunner

As many of you sit down today with friends and family to share in a meal of Thanksgiving, some of us will sneak away to a quiet room for a moment of escape. A moment of contemplation, perhaps, or reflection. Not reflecting on the events of the day, of course, but reflection of this week’s potentially historic box office numbers. Or perhaps the critics awards that begin in earnest next week. And, of course, how all of the above impacts the 2025 Oscar race.

I don’t really consider that a sickness or a disease. It’s more of a quirk or an escape from contemplating more serious, more consequential, or more depressing topics.

At any rate, when looking at the 2025 Oscar landscape, I’m particularly thankful this year for the overall lack of frontrunners in any category. Undeniable frontrunners is what I mean. Films like Oppenheimer last year or performances like Renée Zellweger’s in Judy. Events that, early in the season, you know will win the big prize. It just becomes a matter of time, no matter what the hyperbolic pundits who shift their predictions every week want to tell you. Unless you’re fans of those undeniable moments, those years are typically the worst for Oscar watchers. It removes all the excitement from the game.

But this year, there really aren’t any undeniable frontrunners. There are films and performances who, at this early stage, look good for a potential win, but everything changes starting in December. Films that we all assumed were either loved or forgotten will have their fortunes evaluated over and over based on critics awards (less important), Golden Globe nominations (important only for the visibility), or guild awards (bingo).

In the Best Picture race, Anora is likely to continue its current run as frontrunner into the critics awards. Sean Baker has always been a critical darling, but now he’s managed to blend that critics’ adoration with a more accessible film with which many are obsessed. Anora would be a great winner, in my opinion. It’s an updated spin on classic romantic comedies like It Happened One Night, and despite its more modern moments, it would actually be a perfect classic throwback choice for the Academy.

Yet, at this stage, it doesn’t exactly feel undeniable. This film would mark Baker’s first serious engagement with the Oscar race, and I personally have a hard time imagining him winning Best Director. That doesn’t stop the film from winning Best Picture as the early 2020s have taught us, but it isn’t a slam-dunk right now. But what could beat it? Conclave‘s early box office run proved that adult audiences sought out the film and loved the film. Its week-to-week grosses dropped in extremely low percentages, showing strong word of mouth. I imagined the Thanksgiving weekend window would have been a great time for more people to discover the film, but Focus decided to drop it on home media just before the holiday. That means more people will see it, of course, but it’s starting to feel like The Holdovers all over again in terms of release strategy and awards potential.

Anora‘s most serious contender for critics’ awards would be Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist, a film many have proclaimed an American masterpiece. It will pick up Best Picture prizes from critics somewhere in the world for sure. We’ll know more about its Academy reception, though, once the guilds start rolling out. If it misses here or there, then we’ll know that the running time and rather late roll-out strategy by A24 likely hurt it. The good news for the film is that, once it does drop at the box office, it doesn’t actually have to gross all that much to be deemed a hit. It only cost $6 million to make, something that still boggles my mind after I saw it at the Middleburg Film Festival. September 5 is a very worthy Best Picture nominee, but critics aren’t going to help it along with Best Picture mentions as its reviews are kind, not great, which I don’t understand. It’s a great, hypnotic thriller with impeccable performances and crafts to support it. It’s a classic Best Picture nominee, in my book, but there’s not much buzz around it at the moment. Paramount shifting its release date around isn’t going to help.

And then there’s Wicked, the film that my friend over at Variety Clayton Davis has proclaimed the frontrunner right now. Why does he do that? Well, it’s the film on everyone’s lips right now at this moment. It’s also burning up the Thanksgiving week box office with a record opening weekend for a Broadway musical adaptation and continues to increase its grosses throughout this week. Plus, Wicked-minded audiences absolutely love it. Do I think it’s the frontrunner? No, I don’t. It’s a very good and very entertaining film, but Best Picture winners tend to have some sort of gravitas or importance in them. Wicked has moments of thematic gravity, but it’s the first half of a much deeper overall story. I think that will plague its chances of winning the big prize significantly.

But Wicked did make a huge impact on one previously unchallenged race: Best Supporting Actress. Emilia Pérez‘s Zoe Saldaña looked to be this year’s most undeniable winner when the film screened for the fall film festivals. It sparked a lot of conversation about the many actors and actresses who offer lead-level performances but are being campaigned in the supporting categories. But Saldaña’s grace, poise, and anti-Marvel (my words, not hers) story seemed to overcome any griping about category fraud and put her squarely in position to win. That is until Wicked screened, and audiences understood what Ariana Grande-Butera could do as an actress and with the role of Galinda. She’s outstanding in the role, echoing great “blonde” performances from the likes of Judy Holliday, Marylin Monroe, or Teri Garr. Both actresses, in my opinion, are deserving of the win and will make this a race straight up to the podium on Oscar night. If only they could tie…

Best Supporting Actor also seemed to offer an undeniable frontrunner in Kieran Culkin’s arguably lead performance in A Real Pain. I’m already on the record about how much I loved his work, and I think the Oscar should be his. However, pundits seem to have cooled on his chances, for some reason. You’ll see Denzel Washington out there for Gladiator II or Guy Pearce for The Brutalist or even Clarence Maclin, who could parlay his great personal story into a win for Sing Sing. We’ll see what December brings, but don’t be surprised if the narrative continues to coalesce around Culkin.

Anora‘s best shot at an Oscar win comes in the Best Actress category where most pundits have Mikey Madison as the frontrunner. And, right now, I would agree with that. She’s fantastic in the role, a revelation and seismic shift in her performance screen performances. Plus, having interviewed Madison, I can attest that her “Ani” is as far from her own sweet and demure persona as one could get. SAG and Oscar will probably eat that up, assuming she can overcome that annoying but persistent negativity comparing her sex-positive performance to last year’s winner, Emma Stone in Poor Things.

But I don’t have Madison in my number one slot just yet. I continue to hold out hope that voting audiences will see and love Angelina Jolie’s career-best performance in Maria. Pablo Larrain’s masterpiece has been criminally belittled and misunderstood by critics so far. The film should be a contender across the board as it is the very best of his trilogy of female-focused films. Maybe that’s just my take on it, though. I loved the film, and I’m thankful it exists in this world along with her luminescent performance. I’ll probably shift to Madison if Jolie doesn’t pick up a stronger narrative as the film rolls out on Netflix in mid-December, though. Something has to come along to save her potential whether it’s a guild or a Globe win. It’s going to go down to the wire between those two, I think, unless Cynthia Erivo truly defies gravity.

I’m also thankful for dark horse contender Demi Moore who delivers her own career-best work in The Substance, a film that two months ago I thought would never see the light of the Kodak Theater. However, it’s looking like Moore is going to campaign this one (based on, of course, a great performance) all the way to a nomination. And I would be very thankful for that.

On the other front, if anyone tells you Best Actor has a clear frontrunner, then they’re lying to you. This is a 3-way race between three outstanding performances that could not be more different from each other. Conclave‘s Ralph Fiennes has never won an Oscar and hasn’t even been nominated since 1997’s The English Patient. He should absolutely win for his work in Conclave in my opinion, but he has stiff competition in Adrien Brody (anchoring all 3.5 hours of The Brutalist) and apparently in Timothée Chalamet (boasting that music biopic performance of Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown). I’m still giving the edge to Fiennes at this moment because Conclave is a more serious Best Picture potential winner than The Brutalist (still a tough sit no matter how many critics loved it) or A Complete Unknown (check the tone of those early tweets and their cautiously polite reaction to the film).

Finally, perhaps the most unclear major race remains Best Director. Many have Brady Corbet winning for his amazing direction of The Brutalist, bringing in an incredible vision of post-World War II America on a shoestring budget. Others have Sean Baker winning for Anora. Some have Edward Berger winning for Conclave while others have him missing out on a nomination completely. And a very few have Ridley Scott finally winning an Oscar for his direction of Gladiator II, a film that’s doing well at the box office despite no one seeming to truly love it. Who ultimately wins? I have no idea. I’m going with Corbet at the moment, but I suspect this year will be another mismatch between Picture and Director.

At least, I so think anyway… That’s what makes this year so much fun. Nobody knows a thing for 100% certain. And I’m thankful for that.

Before I go, I and the staff here at The Contending want to thank all of you on this day of Thanksgiving for taking this journey with us. A year ago, we had no idea that we would make the decision to break out on our own and make a go at this. We honestly didn’t know that we could do this. That we had the vision or voice to sustain a site all on our own, but we must thank Awards Daily’s Sasha Stone for continuing to tell us that we did have that voice and we could do this. Yes, the genesis of The Contending will forever be inextricably tied to the events of the late summer, but at least something good has come of it.

We love what we’re doing. We love the Oscar race, but more importantly we love movies like Wicked and A Real Pain and The Brutalist and Nightbitch and Anora among many more this year. We love television like Hacks and Only Murders in the Building and 1,000 Pound Sisters. We love theater. We love making lists. We love interacting with each and every one of you in any way that we can.

And we’re incredibly thankful that we get to do it each and every day.

Thank you for coming along for the ride.

We’ve made major updates to the Oscar Prediction charts this week. Check out The Contending Consensus here and navigate to your favorite predictor or category from there.