Sure, Best Actor and Best Actress aren’t as locked as the other major categories, and a couple of the design categories are tossups between “Barbie” and “Poor Things.” Plus the shorts are always a little pesky. But otherwise, maybe we already know what’s going to happen.

Or maybe not. The Academy has gotten much bigger over the past eight years – 9,797 eligible voters this time around, according to official counts – and much more international. The last “typical” Oscar movie to win Best Picture was probably “Green Book” in 2019, and most shows have thrown in a few surprises: the strength of the German-language “All Quiet on the Western Front” last year, Anthony Hopkins beating the late Chadwick Boseman in 2021, Olivia Colman over Glenn Close in 2019 …

So while “Oppenheimer” looks ready to win lots of awards and its Barbenheimer partner “Barbie” may have to settle for two or three, the Oscar gods can be fickle.  Here are our best guesses as to what’ll be in those envelopes when they’re opened at the Dolby Theatre on Sunday evening – or Sunday late afternoon in the Pacific time zone.

Our complete Oscar predictions in all categories.

Best Picture

Nominees:
“American Fiction”
“Anatomy of a Fall”
“Barbie”
“The Holdovers”
“Killers of the Flower Moon”
“Maestro”
“Oppenheimer”
“Past Lives”
“Poor Things”
“The Zone of Interest”

“Oppenheimer” has been the favorite to win Best Picture since shortly after it premiered in July, and none of the big movies that followed have been able to pose a serious threat to Christopher Nolan’s epic. At this point, the closest thing to a real rival is probably Alexander Payne’s “The Holdovers,” based on the number of conversations I’ve had with voters who’ve said, “I’m sure ‘Oppenheimer’ is going to win, but ‘The Holdovers’ is my favorite.” Still, “Oppenheimer” really hasn’t shown any signs of weakness as it has rolled through awards season, making it hard to imagine that Payne’s film could score a huge upset (even though it could be helped by the Academy’s ranked-choice voting system in this category).    

Predicted winner: “Oppenheimer”

Best Director

Nominees:
Justine Triet, “Anatomy of a Fall”
Jonathan Glazer, “The Zone of Interest”
Yorgos Lanthimos, “Poor Things”
Christopher Nolan, “Oppenheimer”
Martin Scorsese, “Killers of the Flower Moon”

Will sentiment and the fact that he’s the only American nominee help Martin Scorsese grab his second Best Director Oscar? No, it won’t. Given how big and bold “Oppenheimer” is, Nolan is as sure a bet as you’ll find on Oscar night.

Predicted winner: Christopher Nolan, “Oppenheimer”

Best Actor

Nominees:
Bradley Cooper, “Maestro”
Colman Domingo, “Rustin”
Paul Giamatti, “The Holdovers”
Cillian Murphy, “Oppenheimer”
Jeffrey Wright, “American Fiction”

This has been a head-to-head battle between Cillian Murphy and Paul Giamatti all season, with Giamatti seemingly surging until losses at BAFTA and the SAG Awards gave the momentum back to Murphy. Giamatti is still the warmer and more emotional performance – but if “Oppenheimer” is going to dominate, it makes sense that its victories will include the guy who is Oppenheimer.

Predicted winner: Cillian Murphy, “Oppenheimer”

Best Actress

Nominees:
Annette Bening, “Nyad”
Lily Gladstone, “Killers of the Flower Moon”
Sandra Hüller, “Anatomy of a Fall”
Carey Mulligan, “Maestro”
Emma Stone, “Poor Things”

This is another race that seems to have come down to two nominees: Emma Stone, who won the Golden Globe (in the comedy category), the Critics Choice Award and BAFTA for “Poor Things,” and Lily Gladstone, who won the Globe (in drama) and the SAG Award. But the enthusiasm with which everybody (including Stone) greeted Gladstone’s win at SAG suggests that Oscar voters may also want to have that kind of historic moment.

Predicted winner: Lily Gladstone, “Killers of the Flower Moon”

Best Supporting Actor

Nominees:
Sterling K. Brown, “American Fiction”
Robert De Niro, “Killers of the Flower Moon”
Robert Downey Jr., “Oppenheimer”
Ryan Gosling, “Barbie”
Mark Ruffalo, “Poor Things”

There’s not much doubt about the two supporting categories. Sure, “Barbie” fans would love to see Ryan “I’m Just Ken” Gosling shock the world with a win, but Robert Downey Jr. has beaten Gosling (and everybody else) at every awards show except the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Awards, which isn’t a strong enough precursor to mean anything.

Predicted winner: Robert Downey Jr., “Oppenheimer”

Best Supporting Actress

Nominees:
Emily Blunt, “Oppenheimer”
Danielle Brooks, “The Color Purple”
America Ferrera, “Barbie”
Jodie Foster, “Nyad”
Da’Vine Joy Randolph, “The Holdovers”

Da’Vine Joy Randolph, meanwhile, has won almost every supporting-actress award for “The Holdovers.” She might even be a surer thing than Christopher Nolan for director. 

Predicted winner: Da’Vine Joy Randolph, “The Holdovers”

Best Adapted Screenplay

Nominees:
 “American Fiction” (Written for the screen by Cord Jefferson)
“Barbie” (Written by Greta Gerwig & Noah Baumbach)
“Oppenheimer” (Written for the screen by Christopher Nolan)
“Poor Things” (Screenplay by Tony McNamara)
“The Zone of Interest” (Written by Jonathan Glazer)

This is the one major category where “Oppenheimer” is nominated but might not win, with Cord Jefferson’s “American Fiction” screenplay winning at the Critics Choice, BAFTA and Scripter Awards. History says the Best Picture winner will also get a writing award, since that has happened in 16 of the last 20 years, but this might be a year when history is wrong. “Barbie,” which was placed in the original-screenplay category by every other awards group, is the wild card, since this is the only category in which voters can give Greta Gerwig an award of her own.

Predicted winner: “American Fiction”

Best Original Screenplay

Nominees:
 “Anatomy of a Fall” (Screenplay by Justine Triet and Arthur Harari)
“The Holdovers” (Written by David Hemingson)
“Maestro” (Written by Bradley Cooper & Josh Singer)
“May December” (Screenplay by Samy Burch; Story by Samy Burch & Alex Mechanik)
“Past Lives” (Written by Celine Song)

Three of the nominees have a credible chance of winning: “Past Lives,” which is deeply affecting; “The Holdovers,” both funny and touching; and “Anatomy of a Fall,” smart and thorny and the talkiest of the nominees. (Talkiness often appeals to voters in this category.) This is also the likeliest place for the Academy to recognize “Anatomy” co-writer and director Justine Triet, whose film got five nominations.

Predicted winner: “Anatomy of a Fall”

Best Cinematography

Nominees:
“El Conde”
“Killers of the Flower Moon”
“Maestro”
“Oppenheimer”
“Poor Things”

Four of the nominees mix black-and-white and color footage, and one of those four, Hoyte van Hoytema for “Oppenheimer,” is the clear favorite. His win at the American Society of Cinematographers Awards last weekend likely sealed the deal.

Predicted winner: “Oppenheimer”

Best Costume Design

Nominees:
“Barbie”
“Killers of the Flower Moon”
“Napoleon”
“Oppenheimer”
“Poor Things”

The design categories may well be a battle between the pink paradise that is Barbie Land and the twisted Victorian world of “Poor Things.” The costume Oscar could go either way, but we’ll give the slight edge to the doll and her wardrobe.

Predicted winner: “Barbie”

Best Film Editing

Nominees:
“Anatomy of a Fall”
“The Holdovers”
“Killers of the Flower Moon”
“Oppenheimer”
“Poor Things”

“The Holdovers” and “Oppenheimer” won the top film prizes from the American Cinema Editors, but the latter of those has the advantage of a narrative that jumps between different eras and formats.

Predicted winner: “Oppenheimer”

Best Makeup and Hairstyling

Nominees:
“Golda”
“Maestro”
“Oppenheimer”
“Poor Things”
“Society of the Snow”

“Maestro” was the early favorite that seemed to be faltering when it lost makeup awards at the Critics Choice Awards and BAFTA to “Barbie” and “Poor Things,” respectively. But the film, which tackles the Oscar-approved job of making an actor look like a famous historical figure, regained its mojo with wins in two crucial categories at the Make-Up Artists and Hair Stylists Guild Awards.

Predicted winner: “Maestro”

Best Original Score

Nominees:
“American Fiction”
“Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny”
“Killers of the Flower Moon”
“Oppenheimer”
“Poor Things”

There are two sentimental choices here, 92-year-old John Williams for “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” and the late Robbie Robertson for “Killers of the Flower Moon.” And there are two bold choices in “American Fiction” composer Laura Karpman, who would become only the second woman to win in this century, and in Jerskin Fendrix for the deliciously off-kilter music in “Poor Things.” But Ludwig Göransson has been winning all season for “Oppenheimer,” and this is one of that film’s likeliest Oscars.

Predicted winner: “Oppenheimer”

Best Original Song

Nominees:
“The Fire Inside” from “Flamin’ Hot”
“I’m Just Ken” from “Barbie”
“It Never Went Away” from “American Symphony”
“Wahzhazhe (A Song for My People)” from “Killers of the Flower Moon”
“What Was I Made For?” from “Barbie”

Could “Barbie” split the vote and open the door for the indigenous song from “Killers of the Flower Moon” or Jon Batiste’s affecting ballad from “American Symphony?” Could Diane Warren finally win a competitive Oscar in her 15th nomination for “The Fire Inside?” Maybe, but it’s more likely that Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell win their second Oscars in three years for their big “Barbie” ballad “What Was I Made For?”

Predicted winner: “What Was I Made For?” from “Barbie”

Best Production Design

Nominees:
 “Barbie”
“Killers of the Flower Moon”
“Napoleon”
“Oppenheimer”
“Poor Things”

Unless “Oppenheimer” goes on a historic sweep, this is another “Barbie” vs. “Poor Things” showdown. And while the world of “Barbie” is detailed and vibrant in crazy ways, the scale of the globetrotting “Poor Things” might give it a boost with voters.

Predicted winner: “Poor Things”

Best Sound

Nominees:
“The Creator”
“Maestro”
“Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One”
“Oppenheimer”
“The Zone of Interest”

“Oppenheimer” won top film prizes from both of the professional organizations that give out sound awards, which ought to make it the favorite here. But “The Zone of Interest” has done a very good job of pointing out how crucial its sound design is to convey the unseen horrors that take place over the wall of Auschwitz, so it could very well pull off a mild upset.

Predicted winner: “Oppenheimer”

Best Visual Effects

Nominees:
“The Creator”
“Godzilla Minus One”
“Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3”
“Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One”
“Napoleon”

If there’s an obvious choice in this category (“Dune,” “Avatar,” “Gravity” …), voters tend to go for it. If there’s not, they will often gravitate toward something that feels lower key: “First Man” over “Avengers” and “Star Wars” movies, “Ex Machina” over “The Martian” and “The Force Awakens.” So this year, while “The Creator” won the top award from the Visual Effects Society, the Academy may well give “Godzilla Minus One” the first-ever Oscar for that long-running franchise, and the first VFX Oscar to a film’s director since Stanley Kubrick won his only Academy Award for “2001: A Space Odyssey.”

Predicted winner: “Godzilla Minus One”

Best International Feature Film

Nominees:
Germany: “The Teachers’ Lounge”
Italy: “Io Capitano”
Japan: “Perfect Days”
Spain: “Society of the Snow”
United Kingdom: “The Zone of Interest”

The first eight movies that were nominated for Best Picture and Best International Feature Film (or its predecessor category, Best Foreign Language Film) in the same year all won in the international category. That should give “The Zone of Interest” an insurmountable edge – though “Society of the Snow” was so successful on Netflix that it has an outside chance of breaking the streak.

Predicted winner: “The Zone of Interest”

Best Animated Feature Film

Nominees:
“The Boy and the Heron”
“Elemental”
“Nimona”
“Robot Dreams”
“Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse”

Spidey or Miyazaki?  “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” has dominated the guild awards this season, but it’s worth nothing that of the 10 sequels nominated in the first 22 years of this category, two “Toy Story” movies were the only ones to win. If “Spider-Man” runs up against sequel resistance, 83-year-old Japanese legend Hayao Miyazaki could win his second competitive Oscar to go with his Honorary Academy Award from 2014. But it’s hard to ignore all those “Spider-Man” wins.

Predicted winner: “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse”

Best Documentary Feature

Nominees:
“Bobi Wine: The People’s President”
“The Eternal Memory”
“Four Daughters”
“To Kill a Tiger”
“20 Days in Mariupol”

If “Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie” or especially “American Symphony” had been nominated in this category, they might well have won. But the Academy’s Documentary Branch went for a slate of tougher films, where the likeliest winners are the harrowing “20 Days in Mariupol,” the affecting “The Eternal Memory” or the somewhat uplifting “Bobi Wine: The People’s President.” A year after this award went to “Navalny,” the death of that film’s subject may nudge voters toward the new movie about Putin’s transgressions.

Predicted winner: “20 Days in Mariupol”

Best Documentary Short Subject

Nominees:
“The ABCs of Book Banning”
“The Barber of Little Rock”
“Island in Between”
“The Last Repair Shop”
“Nai Nai & Wài Pó”

For the last few years, the common denominator in this category’s winners has been subjects you love, whether they tend to elephants, play basketball or reluctantly revisit their experiences in World War II. This year, that could be good news for the charming character study “Nai Nai & Wài Pó,” though a bevy of fascinating characters are also front-and-center in “The Last Repair Shop.” But then there’s “The ABCs of Book Banning,” which is timely and infuriating and also gives you a classroom full of smart fifth graders to love.  

Predicted winner: “The ABCs of Book Banning”

Best Animated Short

Nominees:
“Letter to a Pig”
”Ninety-Five Senses”
“Our Uniform”
“Pachyderme”
“War Is Over! Inspired by the Music of John & Yoko”

The highest-profile nominee has frequently won ever since voting in this category was opened to everybody, not just the Academy members who’d seen all the nominees in a theater. This year, that would be “War Is Over!,” a charming World War I story co-written by Sean Ono Lennon and featuring the music of his parents and of 15-time Oscar-nominated composer Thomas Newman. But “Letter to a Pig” and “Ninety-Five Senses” are rich enough and disturbing enough to make it a real race.  

Predicted winner: “War Is Over! Inspired by the Music of John & Yoko”

Best Live Action Short

Nominees:
“The After”
“Invincible”
“Knight of Fortune”
“Red, White and Blue”
“The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar”

One of these things is not like the others: The nominees in this category are four films of 30 minutes or less by relatively inexperienced directors from Nigeria, Canada, Denmark and the U.K., plus a 40-minute film featuring a whole lot of movie stars and written and directed by eight-time Oscar nominee Wes Anderson. “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar,” a Netflix release, has by far the highest profile, though “The After” also has Netflix, a movie star in David Oyelowo and the most shocking scene in a category that has a few. One of those films is the likely winner, though “Red, White and Blue” packs a real punch.

Predicted winner: “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar”

The post Oscar Predictions 2024: The Barbenheimer Showdown Will Be Pretty One-Sided appeared first on TheWrap.

But what does winning “big” mean at the Oscars these days?

Christopher Nolan’s epic is currently the favorite (in virtually all cases, the prohibitive favorite) in eight categories, if you go by the prediction chart at Gold Derby. It has already won one of the top film awards at nine different guild or professional association awards shows, covering producing, directing, acting, film editing, cinematography, music, art direction, sound editing and sound mixing.

But if it translate those wins into eight Academy Awards, that total will be the most since 2008’s “Slumdog Millionaire,” which also won eight. If it wins nine, it’ll be more than any film since 2004, when “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” went 11-for-11.

In this century, those two films are the only ones to win that eight or more Oscars – and since the Best Picture category expanded from five to 10 nominees in 2009, 10 of the 14 winners have scored only two or three Oscars in addition to Best Picture.

The fact is, Oscar sweeps like “Lord of the Rings,” “Titanic” (11 wins in 14 nominations) and “The English Patient” (9-for-12) almost never happen the way they used to. Back in 2017, “La La Land” landed a record 14 nominations and was thought to have a good chance to win in 10 categories; it ended up with six Oscars, famously losing Best Picture to “Moonlight” but also falling short in film editing, costume design and sound mixing.

Since the Best Picture category expanded in 2009, its winners have averaged 3.9 total Oscar wins. That’s the lowest average since the 1930s, when the Academy had far fewer categories. By contrast, Best Picture winners averaged 4.4 total wins in the 1940s, 6.6 wins in the 1950s, 5.9 wins in the 1960s, five wins in the 1970s, 5.7 wins in the 1980s, 6.6 wins in the 1990s and 5.5 wins in the 2000s.

These days, it seems that voters consider each category independently rather than checking boxes for the same movie up and down the ballot. (In other words, they do what they’re supposed to do.) As a result, there have been fewer big sweeps – though “Oppenheimer” might be heartened by the fact that there was a smaller sweep just last year, when “Everything Everywhere All at Once” used three acting awards to push its total to seven, the most since “Slumdog.”

How will “Oppenheimer” do on Sunday night? Let’s look at its 13 nominations, ranked from the least to the most likely to result in a gold statuette.

Best Supporting Actress

Sorry, Emily Blunt. Da’Vine Joy Randolph has had this category locked up since “The Holdovers” premiered four months ago.

Best Makeup and Hairstyling

This is one of the categories where the nomination itself was proof how much Oscar voters loved “Oppenheimer.” But the award will probably go to “Maestro,” for the transformation of Bradley Cooper into Leonard Bernstein, or to “Poor Things,” for extensive prosthetic work on Willem Dafoe.

Best Costume Design

Here’s another category where nobody really expects Cillian Murphy’s stylishly baggy suits to win out over the pink phenomenon that was “Barbie” or the insane fantasia that was “Poor Things.”  

Best Production Design

“Mank” won in this category three years ago, so another bow to midcentury masculinity is possible. But the least flashy nominee virtually never wins, and this is another category where “Barbie” and “Poor Things” bring the dazzle.

Best Adapted Screenplay

Even though the Best Picture winner has also won a screenwriting award at 16 of the last 20 Oscar ceremonies, this category is seemingly up for grabs, with Cord Jefferson and “American Fiction” beating Nolan and “Oppenheimer” at the Critics Choice Awards, Scripter Award and BAFTA Awards. (“Anatomy of a Fall” won at the Golden Globes, which does not have separate categories for adapted and original screenplays.) An “Oppenheimer” win wouldn’t be a surprise, but this is the likeliest way for voters to acknowledge the well-liked “American Fiction.”

Best Actor

Now we’re moving into categories where “Oppenheimer” wins are likely. Cillian Murphy won Golden Globe, Critics Choice and SAG Awards for his performance as the title character in Nolan’s film. But he’s still in a competitive race with Paul Giamatti, who also won a Globe and whose performance in “The Holdovers” may have more of an emotional pull. Still, the SAG win, and the fact that Murphy is playing a real person like more than 60% of the winners since 2010, give him an edge.

Best Sound

Wins from the Cinema Audio Society and the Motion Picture Sound Editors make “Oppenheimer” the film to beat in this category. Its biggest rival, and a serious one, is “The Zone of Interest,” which has done a good job at getting across just how essential its sound design was to its storytelling.

Best Cinematography

Here are two scary statistics for “Oppenheimer” DP Hoyte van Hoytema: It’s been nine years since the Best Picture winner also took the cinematography Oscar, and the two awards have gone to the same film only twice in this century. (“Slumdog Millionaire” and “Birdman.”) But with its blend of formats and of color and black-and-white photography, “Oppenheimer” was feeling like the exception to those stats even before van Hoytema won the American Society of Cinematographers Award on Sunday.

Best Original Score

In the past 12 years, American composers have only won in this category twice, and Swedish composer Ludwig Göransson is a strong favorite to win for “Oppenheimer” over two Americans (Laura Karpman and John Williams), a Canadian (the late Robbie Robertson) and a Brit (Jerskin Fendrix). Fendrix might be a sleeper for his wacky “Poor Things” score, and there’s sentiment behind Williams and Robertson, but Göransson is the favorite just as he was when he won for “Black Panther” five years ago.

Best Film Editing

A Best Picture favorite that jumps between different time periods? That’s the kind of editing that’s attractive even to voters who might not understand the intricacies of the craft. As for the ones who do understand the craft, they already gave “Oppenheimer” editor Jennifer Lame their top award at the American Cinema Editors’ Eddie Awards.

Best Picture

There’s just no solid evidence that any other nominee has mounted a serious challenge to “Oppenheimer” in this category. The film’s only weakness lies in the fact that something like “The Holdovers” might be slightly better served by the ranked-choice voting system used in this category (and only in this category), where a consensus choice can edge out a film that may well get more No. 1 votes but is also slightly divisive. (Example: “Moonlight” beating “La La Land.”) But that’s grasping at straws.

Best Supporting Actor

The two supporting categories are all but locked: Best Supporting Actress is locked against Emily Blunt, and Best Supporting Actor is locked for Robert Downey Jr. “Barbie” fans hold out hopes for a Ryan Gosling upset, but that’s a huge longshot.

Best Director

In recent years, we’ve seen several picture/director splits, where the big, ambitious movie wins for director and the artier indie wins for picture. So even if “Oppenheimer” somehow loses for Best Picture, which isn’t going to happen, Nolan still won’t lose Best Director.

The post The Big Oscars Question for ‘Oppenheimer’: How Much Can It Win? appeared first on TheWrap.

Music supervisor George Drakoulias won in the Best Music Supervision for Film Budgeted Over $25 Million category for “Barbie,” while Drakoulias and songwriters Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell won in the Best Song Written and/or Recorded for a Film category for “What Was I Made For?”

Other film winners were “Joy Ride” (Best Music Supervision for Film Budgeted $25 Million and Under), “Theater Camp” (Best Music Supervision for Film Budgeted $10 Million and Under) and a tie between “Chang Can Dunk” and “Totally Killer” for Best Music Supervision for a Non-Theatrically Released Film.

“Daisy Jones” music supervisor Frankie Pine won in the Best Music Supervision – Television Comedy or Musical category, while that limited series also won in the Best Song Written and/or Recorded for Television category for “Look at Us Now (Honeycomb).” “The White Lotus” and “Love & Hip Hop: Miami” also won TV awards.

In the documentary categories, Jonathan Finegold won for “Little Richard: I Am Everything” and Andrea von Foerster won for “Welcome to Wrexham” Season 2.

The trailers for “Killers of the Flower Moon,” “Yellowjackets” and “Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League” also won awards. “Marvel’s Spider-Man 2” won in both of the video game categories.

Eilish and O’Connell’s win for “What Was I Made For?” came from a category that also contained two songs they’re competing against for the Best Original Song Oscar — “I’m Just Ken,” also from “Barbie,” and “It Never Went Away” from “American Symphony.” In the previous eight years that the GMS has presented an award in the song category, its winner has only gone on to take the song Oscar twice.

Sunday’s ceremony also honored the late Robbie Robertson with a performance by Margo Price, Rocco DeLuca and Johnny Shepherd. Robertson was also honored with the posthumous presentation of the Icon Award, while Allan Mason received the Legacy Award.

The show took place at the Wiltern Theater in Los Angeles.

The winners:

FILM 

Best Music Supervision for Film Budgeted Over $25 Million 
George Drakoulias, “Barbie” 

Best Music Supervision for Film Budgeted $25 Million And Under 
Toko Nagata, “Joy Ride” 

Best Music Supervision for Film Budgeted $10 Million And Under 
Lindsay Wolfington, “Theater Camp” 

Best Music Supervision for a Non-Theatrically Released Film 
Tie: 
Angela Asistio, “Chang Can Dunk” 
Toko Nagata, “Totally Killer” 

Best Song Written and/or Recorded for a Film 
“What Was I Made For?” from “Barbie” 
Music Supervisor: George Drakoulias 
Performer: Billie Eilish 
Songwriters: Billie Eilish O’Connell, Finneas O’Connell 

TELEVISION 

Best Music Supervision – Television Drama 
Gabe Hilfer , “The White Lotus” Season 2 

Best Music Supervision – Television Comedy or Musical 
Frankie Pine, “Daisy Jones & The Six” Season 1 

Best Music Supervision – Reality Television 
Carrie Hughes, “Love & Hip Hop: Miami” Season 5 

Best Song Written and/or Recorded for Television 
“Look At Us Now (Honeycomb)” from “Daisy Jones & The Six” 
Music Supervisor: Frankie Pine 
Performer: Daisy Jones & The Six 
Songwriters: Jason Boesel, Blake Mills, Marcus Mumford, Johnathan Rice, Stephony Smith 

DOCUMENTARIES 

Best Music Supervision for a Documentary 
Jonathan Finegold, “Little Richard: I Am Everything” 

Best Music Supervision in a Docuseries 
Andrea von Foerster, “Welcome to Wrexham” Season 2 

ADVERTISING 

Best Music Supervision in Advertising (Synch) 
Scott McDaniel 
Run This Town – The Road to Halftime Starts on Rihanna Drive 

Best Music Supervision in Advertising (Original Music) 
Nicole Palko, Jonathan Wellbelove 
iPhone 15 Plus – Miss You 

TRAILERS 

Best Music Supervision in a Trailer – Film 
Angel Mendoza, “Killers of the Flower Moon” – Official Teaser Trailer 

Best Music Supervision in a Trailer – Series 
Rochelle Holguin Cappello, Katie Pool, “Yellowjackets” Season 2 – Official Trailer 

Best Music Supervision in a Trailer – Video Game & Interactive 
Rebecca Bergman, Brian Murphy , Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League – Official Justice League Trailer – No More Heroes 

VIDEO GAMES 

Best Music Supervision in a Video Game (Synch) 
Alex Hackford, “Marvel’s Spider-Man 2” 

Best Music Supervision in a Video Game (Original Music) 
“Marvel’s Spider-Man 2” 
Music Supervisors: Alex Hackford, Scott Hanau, Keith Leary 
Composer: John Paesano 

The post ‘Barbie,’ ‘Daisy Jones & the Six’ Win at Guild of Music Supervisors Awards appeared first on TheWrap.

Editor Jennifer Lame won the award for “Oppenheimer” in the Best Edited Feature Film (Drama, Theatrical) category, while Kevin Tent won for “The Holdovers” in Best Edited Feature Film (Comedy, Theatrical).

Michael Andrews won for editing “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” in the animated feature category, while Michael Harte won for the documentary “Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie.”

In the television categories, winners included “How I Met Your Father” (Best Edited Multi-Camera Comedy Series), “The Bear” (Best Edited Single Camera Comedy Series), “The Last of Us” (Best Edited Drama Series) and “Beef” (Best Edited Limited Series).

The Taylor Swift concert film “Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour” won in the Best Edited Variety Talk/Sketch Show or Special category.

The American Cinema Editors have been giving out awards for more than six decades, with one of its feature-film winners going on to win the Oscar for Best Film Editing about two-thirds of the time. In the 24 years since ACE split its top film award into separate drama and comedy or musical categories, its drama winner has taken the Oscar 14 times and its comedy/musical winner has done so twice. This year, both “Oppenheimer” and “The Holdovers” are nominated for the film-editing Oscar.

Special awards went to director John Waters, who received the ACE Golden Eddie Award, while editors Kate Amend and Walter Murch received Career Achievement Awards and Stephen Lovejoy received the ACE Heritage Award.

The ceremony took place at Royce Hall on the UCLA campus in West Los Angeles and was hosted by Nina West, who received one of the only awards-show standing ovations to go to a host in recent memory. It came after West performed a three-song mini-musical titled “Editor.”

The winners:

Best Edited Feature Film (Drama, Theatrical):
“Oppenheimer”
Jennifer Lame, ACE

Best Edited Feature Film (Comedy, Theatrical):
“The Holdovers”
Kevin Tent, ACE

Best Edited Animated Feature Film
“Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse”
Michael Andrews, ACE

Best Edited Documentary (Theatrical):
“Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie”
Michael Harte, ACE

Best Edited (Non-Theatrical):
“Escaping Twin Flames”: “Up in Flames”
Martin Biehn
Kevin Hibbard
Inbal B. Lessner, ACE
Troy Takaki, ACE
Mimi Wilcox

Best Edited Multi-Camera Comedy Series
“How I Met Your Father”: “Daddy”
Russell Griffin, ACE

Best Edited Single Camera Comedy Series
“The Bear”:“Fishes”
Joanna Naugle, ACE

Best Edited Drama Series
“The Last of Us”: “Long, Long Time”
Timothy A. Good, ACE

Best Edited Feature Film (Non-Theatrical):
“Reality”
Jennifer Vecchiarello

Best Edited Limited Series:
“Beef”: “The Birds Don’t Sing, They Screech in Pain”
Harry Yoon, ACE
Laura Zempel, ACE

Best Edited Non-Scripted Series:
“Couples Therapy”: “Episode 310”
Delaney Lynch
Helen Kearns, ACE
Katrina Taylor

Best Edited Variety Talk/Sketch Show or Special:
“Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour”
Dom Whitworth
Guy Harding
Hamish Lyons
Rupa Rathod
Ben Wainwright-Pearce
Reg Wrench

Best Edited Animated Series:
“Blue Eye Samurai”: “The Tale of the Ronin and The Bride”
Yuka Shirasuna

Anne V. Coates Award for Student Editing:
Ariel Emma Martin – Chapman University

The post ‘Oppenheimer,’ ‘The Holdovers’ Win at ACE Eddie Awards appeared first on TheWrap.

Everett wrote the 2001 novel “Erasure” and currently serves as a Distinguished Professor of English at USC. He is the first sitting USC professor to win an award that has gone to a number of alumni, including Jason Reitman for “Up in the Air” and Larry Karaszewski and Scott Alexander for “The People vs. O.J. Simpson.”

“American Fiction” won in a category that also included “Killers of the Flower Moon,” “Oppenheimer,” “Origin” and “Poor Things.” It was Jefferson’s second Scripter nomination; he was previously nominated in 2019 for the “This Extraordinary Being” episode of the HBO limited series “Watchmen.” 

In the television category, the “Negotiating With Tigers” episode of “Slow Horses” won. It was the second year in a row that an episode of that series had won the Scripter for screenwriter Will Smith and novelist Mick Herron.

Other TV nominees included episodes of “The Crown,” “Daisy Jones & the Six,” “The Last of Us” and “Winning Time.”

The Scripter Awards were established in 1988, and since then a little fewer than half of its winners have gone on to receive Academy Awards in the Best Adapted Screenplay category. The two awards shows began to agree far more often beginning in 2008, which began a streak of 10 matches in 11 years. Since 2019, though, the Scripters and the Oscars have only aligned once, with “Women Talking” last year. 

The ceremony took place at the Doheny Memorial Library at USC and was a fundraising event for USC Libraries.

The post ‘American Fiction’ Wins Scripter Award for Adapted Screenplays appeared first on TheWrap.

As prelude, I’ll say that we learned you don’t need Waze or Google Maps to figure out the best way to get from the beach at Santa Monica (site of the Spirit Awards) to the Ray Dolby Ballroom (location of the Producers Guild Awards) on a late Sunday afternoon. All you have to do is follow those Escalades and other black SUVs ferrying talent east on the 10 freeway and up Fairfax and La Brea Avenues to Hollywood.

Here’s what else we learned:

“Oppenheimer” is pretty much unstoppable.

Christopher Nolan’s three-hour drama won everything it was supposed to win over the weekend, and it even won in some categories (SAG ensemble) in which it wasn’t a strong favorite. With SAG on Saturday and PGA on Sunday to go with its Directors Guild Award from two weeks ago, it has fashioned the kind of major-guild sweep that has resulted in a Best Picture win in nine of the 10 previous times it’s been done (The only film that won DGA, PGA and SAG but didn’t win the Oscar was “Apollo 13” way back in 1995).

If you throw in its wins at the Golden Globes and the Critics Choice Awards, “Oppenheimer” has had the most dominant awards-season run since “Argo” in 2013, and before that “Slumdog Millionaire” in 2009, “No Country for Old Men” in 2008, “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” in 2004, “Chicago” in 2003 and “American Beauty” in 2000.

Of course, the Academy has changed too much to make precedent as binding as it once was. But after this past weekend, it’s almost impossible to imagine any other movie winning Best Picture on March 10.

The Writers Guild Awards are irrelevant to anybody not in the Writers Guild.

The interesting thing about the major-guild sweep for “Oppenheimer” is that one of the four main Hollywood guilds, the Writers Guild of America, essentially opted out of awards season this year — and the WGA Award for adapted screenplay is the big guild prize that “Oppenheimer” may well lose.

Because of the strike that stalled production for a big chunk of 2023, the WGA decided to delay its awards show until April 14, more than a month after the Oscars. By that point, though, a loss won’t mean a thing in the overall awards profile of Nolan’s film.  

The Writers Guild already restricts eligibility for its awards to productions written under its contract or the contract of an affiliated international guild, a rule that this year disqualified Oscar contenders “Anatomy of a Fall,” “Poor Things” and “The Zone of Interest,” among others. When you throw in a date that’s five weeks after the Oscars and seven weeks later than any other major guild, that makes the Writers Guild Award a nice prize for WGA members and an afterthought to everybody else in awards season.   

The Best Actress race just got really interesting.

There weren’t many categories that came into this past awards weekend with one frontrunner and came out of it with another. But that may have happened in Best Actress, where the consensus that had formed in favor of Emma Stone from “Poor Things” was shaken the moment the SAG Awards announced that their winner was Lily Gladstone from “Killers of the Flower Moon.” The race had been considered a tight one between Gladstone and Stone all season, but Stone’s wins at the Critics Choice Awards and BAFTAs had seemingly made her a favorite to win her second Oscar after her “La La Land” win in 2017.

Stone’s performance is bigger, wilder and wackier of the two, and it could still be irresistible to Oscar voters. But if SAG-AFTRA went for Gladstone’s quieter performance and created a historic first-ever victory for a Native American actor, will Oscar voters really want to miss that opportunity as well? Besides, the exuberance and glee with which Stone applauded her rival’s SAG victory essentially gave voters who were on the fence permission to cast their ballots for Gladstone.

Paul Giamatti is going to need some help from the “‘Oppenheimer’ is going to win, but … ” crowd.

The Best Actor race also seemed tight going into the SAG Awards, with Cillian Murphy’s work in “Oppenheimer” perhaps giving him a slight edge over Paul Giamatti for “The Holdovers.” Some momentum seemed to be with Giamatti until Murphy won SAG, securing his status as a narrow favorite in a very close category.

Anecdotal evidence, though, offers a pathway for Giamatti to pull this one out. Over the last couple of weeks, my conversations with voters have yielded the same line with surprising frequency: “‘Oppenheimer’ is going to win, but ‘The Holdovers’ is my favorite.” It’s crazy to think that there are enough of those “Oppenheimer” but voters to turn the Best Picture race, but if they all united behind Giamatti in Best Actor, it could make a difference.

“Past Lives” has joined some exclusive company.

Celine Song’s lovely and evocative meditation on identity ended up in a select group when it was named Best Feature at the Film Independent Spirit Awards on Sunday. Back in November, the film had also won the top prize at the Gotham Awards, so its Spirit Award victory made it the eighth film to win both of the top indie awards in the 20 years that they’ve both been given out.

The first seven films to do so were “Sideways,” “Birdman,” “Spotlight,” “Moonlight,” “Nomadland,” “The Lost Daughter” and “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” five of which also went on to win Best Picture at the Oscars. The chances of “Past Lives” scoring that particular trifecta are close to nil, but the Spirit Awards can stand as a fitting culmination for a richly deserving gem.

“American Fiction” has found a category in which it may continue to triumph.

Back in September, Cord Jefferson’s film won the Audience Award at the Toronto International Film Festival, often a Best Picture precursor. But while “Oppenheimer” has continued its awards-season roll, Jefferson’s very funny and very serious film about race and family won its third screenwriting prize on Sunday at the Spirit Awards. He’s now taken that category at the Critics Choice Awards, BAFTAs and the Spirits, and he’s got another good chance to do it this weekend at the USC Libraries Scripter Awards (against “Oppenheimer,” no less).  

In the last decade, the Oscar Best Picture winner has typically also won a screenplay award. But “American Fiction” may well have found a category in which it can keep winning.

It’s a good thing a new season for TV eligibility is coming soon.

“Succession.” “The Bear.” “Beef.” Rinse, repeat.

Those three programs won a total of 11 awards over the weekend, triumphing in all but two of the categories where they were eligible and continuing a crazy streak that began in January. Essentially, “Succession” has won almost all the TV drama awards, “The Bear” has won all the comedy awards and “Beef” has won all the limited series awards.

Are they great shows? Of course. Is all this “Succession”/”Bear”/”Beef” stuff at every awards show getting tiring? Yep.

But at the SAG Awards, “Succession” actor Alan Ruck described the show’s ensemble award as its “last hurrah” — and as the 2023 awards season winds down and the 2024 one begins with this year’s Emmys (as opposed to last year’s Emmys, which got delayed until this year), it may come as a relief to find that “Succession” and “Beef” will no longer be eligible.

“The Bear” will be, though, at least at the Emmys. We’re not done with that one yet.   

Kenneth Branagh has a very formidable beard.

This has nothing to do with the awards race, except that Branagh appeared at the SAG Awards and the PGA on behalf of “Oppenheimer” and showed off some new facial hair that’s every bit the equal of his Hercule Poirot mustache.

Its exact purpose, be it professional or recreational, has yet to be revealed. But wow.  

The post ‘Oppenheimer’ Dominates, Lily Gladstone Surges and Other Lessons We Learned on a Big Awards Weekend appeared first on TheWrap.

“Oppenheimer” is the most secure Best Picture winner since “Nomadland” because there’s simply no other film that has shown the ability to challenge it. Christopher Nolan seems to have Best Director locked up, and so do supporting actor and actress contenders Robert Downey Jr. and Da’Vine Joy Randolph.

But with the SAG Awards, the Film Independent Spirit Awards and the Producers Guild Awards all taking place within a span of about 29 hours on Saturday and Sunday, this weekend will be a huge one two weeks before the Oscars. (Next weekend will bring five more shows in two days, but none of them are as major as this weekend’s trio of shows.)

So there have to be some things yet to learn and some clues yet to drop in the middle of the Oscar voting period, which began on Thursday morning and ends next Tuesday evening.

For instance:  

Giamatti or Murphy? Stone or Gladstone?

The two lead acting races both remain question marks – and with Screen Actors Guild voters having about an 80% accuracy rate in predicting Oscar winners, Saturday evening’s SAG Awards will supply clues about the Best Actor race between Cillian Murphy (“Oppenheimer”) and Paul Giamatti (“The Holdovers”) and the Best Actress one between Emma Stone (“Poor Things”) and Lily Gladstone (“Killers of the Flower Moon”).

Murphy and Stone are the presumed favorites, but neither is anywhere near a lock – and if Giamatti or Gladstone wins and delivers a killer speech, it’s not out of the question that it could sway a small number of voters before Oscar balloting ends on Tuesday. (In general, though, we’re not talking about the SAG Awards influencing the Academy as much as revealing the leanings of some voters.)

And if, say, Annette Bening scores a SAG upset over Stone and Gladstone, all bets are off.  

Will the Indie Spirit Awards bring any clarity to the screenplay races?

“American Fiction” won at BAFTA and got a boost in its tough Oscar adapted-screenplay battle with “Barbie,” “Oppenheimer,” “Poor Things” and “The Zone of Interest,” while the original-screenplay category could be a tough three-way race between “Anatomy of a Fall,” “The Holdovers” and “Past Lives.” The Indie Spirit Awards’ screenplay category could indicate the depth of affection for “American Fiction,” “The Holdovers” or “Past Lives,” but it can’t do much beyond that because the other Oscar nominees aren’t in the running. And the Writers Guild, which won’t give out its awards until mid-April, is no help at all.

Could Ryan Gosling be Ken-ough for SAG voters?

Of course Robert Downey Jr. is the favorite in the supporting actor category. But SAG-AFTRA voters do show a populist streak on occasion: After all, this is the show where Johnny Depp won for “Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl” and where Emily Blunt won for a horror movie, “A Quiet Place.”

So yeah, Ryan Gosling’s performance as Ken in “Barbie” seems like the kind of thing that could win at the People’s Choice Awards (it did) but lose to a more serious role at the more serious awards shows. But if it can deliver a big pink shock to any awards show, the SAG Awards might just be the one.  

How assiduously will Spirit Awards voters court the Oscars?

For a couple of decades beginning in the late 1980s, the phrase “win on Saturday, lose on Sunday” was commonly used to describe the Film Independent Spirit Awards. That show took place on the Saturday afternoon before the Oscars, and it always gave its top prize to a movie that wouldn’t win Best Picture the next day.

These days, you never hear that phrase. For one thing, the Spirit Awards have moved to a Sunday two weeks before the Oscars; for another, the Spirit win for “The Artist” in 2012 began a six-year stretch in which the Spirit Awards winner went on to take the top Oscar five times. (“The Artist,” “12 Years a Slave,” “Birdman,” “Spotlight” and “Moonlight” were the double winners.) There have been two more matches in the last three years, with “Nomadland” and “Everything Everywhere All at Once” – but even when the two groups don’t agree, Indie Spirit voters tend to find and vote for the closest thing they can find to an Oscar winner.

This year, there are Oscar nominees in seven of the 13 Indie Spirit film categories, including two in Best Feature (“American Fiction” and “Past Lives”), one in Best Lead Performance (Jeffrey Wright) and two in Best Supporting Performance (Sterling K. Brown and Da’Vine Joy Randolph), among others. There aren’t likely to be many matches between the Spirit Awards and the Oscars this year (though Randolph will probably provide one), so the question could simply become how Oscary Spirit voters want to get.

“Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” or “The Boy and the Heron?”

These two films, one the sequel to an Oscar-winning animated film and the other potentially the final work from the revered and Oscar-winning Japanese director Hayao Miyazaki, have been divvying up the major animation awards so far. “Spider-Man” won the Critics Choice Award and dominated the Annie Awards, while “The Boy and the Heron” won the Golden Globe and BAFTA.

Of those four awards, BAFTA and the Critics Choice are tied as the best Oscar predictors with 82% success rates, so the fact that one went to “Spider-Man” and the other to “Boy and the Heron” is thoroughly unrevealing.

The Producers Guild Awards on Sunday is the only one of this weekend’s ceremonies that has an animation category, so it will at least give the appearance of helping one of the contenders.

Can “Oppenheimer” lock things up by Sunday night?

If it wins the SAG ensemble award and the Producers Guild Award, it’ll look that way. After the Academy expanded its Best Picture category to 10 nominees in 2009, the PGA did the same, and also followed the Academy in instituting ranked-choice voting in its top category. That led to six straight years of matching winners (if you count the PGA’s 2014 tie between Oscar winner “12 Years a Slave” and “Gravity”), and a general feeling that the guild was the closest thing you could get to an infallible predictor. But then the PGA went for “The Big Short” instead of Oscar winner “Spotlight” in 2016, and “La La Land” instead of “Moonlight” in 2017, and “1917” instead of “Parasite” in 2020.

The two organizations got back on a three-year streak of matching winners in 2021, so an “Oppenheimer” win at the Producers Guild will make Oscar gold feel inevitable. (By the same token, an upset at the hands of “American Fiction,” “Barbie” or “The Holdovers” will seriously shake the “Oppy” air of invincibility.) But those three misses in that five year stretch will always create a little bit of doubt.

Are we tired of “Succession,” “The Bear” and “Beef” yet?

Moving to television for a minute, all three of the weekend’s awards show include TV categories. And all three offer new opportunities for the three programs that have dominated awards for the past few months to continue their rolls.

At the SAG Awards, “Succession” has five nominations, including three of the five in the Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Drama Series category; “The Bear” has four; and “Beef” has two, one for Steven Yeun and one for Ali Wong. At the Producers Guild Awards, “Succession” is favored in the drama category, “The Bear” is the frontrunner in the comedy category and “Beef” is the likely winner in the Limited Series category. But the Indie Spirit Awards’ TV categories are restricted to new shows, so “Succession” and “The Bear” aren’t eligible. (The latter show won last year.) Still, “Beef” is nominated for Best New Scripted Series and also has noms for Wong and Yeun, who are competing against each other in the gender-neutral Best Lead Performance in a New Scripted Series category.

If you’re weary of those three shows trooping to the podium, sorry about that: For the weekend, the over/under on wins for the three shows is probably about 10.

The post What’s Left to Learn in the Biggest Awards Weekend Before the Oscars? appeared first on TheWrap.

And sure enough, that’s exactly when Choudhury got the idea. “It was written in July, the very next month after the decision had been made and there were so many news articles about the real-world consequences and repercussions for so many people,” she said. “I have an experience myself of needing a procedure for a non-viable pregnancy — which if I hadn’t had, I would not be here to tell this tale or be the mother to my two teenage daughters. And so I really understood the fact that as a storyteller, I had a platform to tell a story with which I could represent one family living in Arkansas and how the real-world repercussions of this decision affects them.

“I had the idea overnight as a fully fleshed, cinematic story. I woke up and the idea was there. I wrote it almost immediately, in the space of about two or three hours. And it’s pretty much the film that you now see on screen.”

Choudhury had planned to get into directing when she went to school in her native Great Britain, but she got sidetracked with offers to write for British TV. She continued as a writer when she moved to the United States and worked on shows like “Fear the Walking Dead” but decided to become a director once she had the lean, 10-page script for “Red, White and Blue,” along with clear ideas of how it should look. “I really wanted it to feel very grounded, where you feel like you are in this world with these characters,” she said.

The key was to figure out how to capture the nuances of the screenplay on camera. “When you write in prose form, you can use details to elaborate the subtext of everything,”she said. “With a sentence, I might be able to say 10 things. But when you have to translate that to the screen, how do you land it so that the same gut punch is felt on the screen as it is on the page?

“I work extensively in the television space, where you have a creative vision as a producer or a showrunner that you maintain. But this was my first time directing, and that was a different beast.”

But she couldn’t focus completely on directing because she was also working as a producer: “I was booking car rentals for my cinematographer to come out here and stay with me,” she said, laughing. “My entire house was turned into the costume department, with fittings happening and my kids running around, hosting people and saying, ‘Can we get you water? What would you like to drink?’ It was as independent as they get.”

Her daughters helped her overcome other challenges, too. “It was difficult to raise the resources we needed financially,” she said, “and it was a mammoth undertaking because this was a production that features child actors who we have responsibilities toward, very rightly so. And we had a road trip, and a pivotal scene with a song in the middle of it.” She laughed. “If I had my wish list, I would have gotten a Cyndi Lauper song or a Taylor Swift song, but I’m a short filmmaker – I don’t have that power or reach or finances. It ended up being my two daughters who sang in that road-trip scene.”

Her film has gotten attention for a devastating reveal that takes place late in its running time, but Choudhury hesitates to call the moment a twist. “Even though it becomes expedient to talk about it that way, this really was the story all along,” she said. “It was a metaphor for the fact that we have preconceived notions, we make judgments. It wasn’t done for the shock factor and it wasn’t done for the twist.

“We’re trying to tell you, ‘These are all the reasons why someone could need and want this (abortion), and here’s another added reason. If you haven’t changed your mind before, how does this affect you now? Because if you are a human being, you should understand why it’s so important.”

A version of this story first appeared in the Down to the Wire issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine. Read more of the issue here.

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But none of those were as big and wild as Element’s third nominated film, Lanthimos’ “Poor Things,” a historical romp about a beautiful but childlike Frankenstein creature named Bella (Emma Stone) that takes place in a mock Victorian landscape and was made on a budget of a reported $35 million. It ultimately garnered 11 Oscar nominations, second only to “Oppenheimer.”

“It was by far the biggest thing we’d done,” producer Ed Guiney said after previously earning nominations for both “Room” and “The Favourite.” “Yorgos wanted to build the world — create Bella’s world, if you like, so that you’re seeing something that isn’t a reality. I guess it’s seen almost through her eyes, if that makes sense.”

It might not make complete sense — Bella was reanimated by putting an infant’s brain into a dead woman’s body, after all — but “Poor Things” is ravishing and ridiculous, an ode to freedom from the Greek director of such delicious slices of surreal social commentary as “The Lobster,” “The Favourite” and the surprise Oscar nominee that put him on the map, 2009’s “Dogtooth.”

That last film was what attracted Element Pictures cofounders Guiney and Andrew Lowe, who met with Lanthimos when he announced that he wanted to make his next film in English. “He came to London and made the rounds and met everybody, and an exec working for us met him initially and then introduced him to us,” Lowe said. “We started a conversation that led to him being attached to ‘The Favourite,’ which at the time was a project called ‘The Balance of Power.’ But that was six or seven years before we made the film.”

They then began putting together “The Lobster.” And around that time, Lanthimos also mentioned that he wanted to adapt the 1992 novel “Poor Things.” “I think he’d met (author) Alasdair Gray around 2009, before ‘Dogtooth’ became a thing, really,” Guiney said. “He was looking for someone to help him with the project, and we knew enough about him at that point to be absolutely enthusiastic in wanting to help him in any way we could. And so we signed up, I guess, without knowing how we would pull it off.”

He laughed, adding, “At that point, we were quite early in our careers, so maybe if one had been rational about it, it wouldn’t have been a thing to pursue. But we were in love with working with him, so we dove in and built it over time as we did other movies.”

The two keys to getting “Poor Things” off the ground, Guiney noted, were the success of “The Favourite,” which made almost $100 million on a $15 million budget and received 10 Oscar nominations; and the fact that Stone signed on to star as Bella and also serve as a producer. “Those were the things that turned it from a pipe dream into a reality,” he said. “But that took a moment.”

“Ignorance was bliss,” Lowe said. “None of us had made a film of this scale before, so while we understood it was big, we didn’t really appreciate how big it would be. But we had the advantage of having had a great relationship with Searchlight on ‘The Favourite’ and we knew they had an option to do Yorgos’ next thing. Initially, we thought, let’s try to double the budget of ‘The Favourite.’ That was the number to aim for, and it crept up from there as we learned more about the challenges of actually making the film.” (The final budget of “Poor Things” was reportedly around $35 million, with a worldwide gross approaching $100 million.)

“We came to it with a lot of fear, but also a lot of excitement,” Guiney said. “And because we were all coming to it with a certain amount of naïveté, we were able to really stretch the budget. I think we approached it from an independent mentality rather than an experienced mentality.” During COVID, they assembled a design team to come up with ideas for the world while simultaneously figuring out a budget. Filming in Budapest – where they took over most of the city’s major soundstages – was a big help: “It probably would have been double the price if we did it in the U.K.”

Lanthimos, meanwhile, remains as idiosyncratic as ever. “He’s obviously evolved,” Lowe said, “and arguably he’s a more confident person, as anyone who ages 12 years and has a lot of professional success is likely to be.”

“But the thing that really struck us when we first met him was his singularity and his clarity of thought,” he concluded. “He is very clear about what he wants and he has exacting standards for himself and everyone he works with. It was part of what attracted us to him in the first place, and those traits all describe him today, too.”

“Poor Things” is now playing in theaters.

A version of this story first appeared in the Down to the Wire issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine. Read more from the issue here.

The post Inside the Wacky World of Yorgos Lanthimos’ ‘Poor Things’ With His Irish Producers appeared first on TheWrap.

It also won awards for its created environment, model, effects simulations and compositing & lighting.

“Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” swept the animated-feature categories, winning four awards, while other feature-film awards went to “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3,” which won two, and “Nyad” and “Oppenheimer,” which won one each.

In the television categories, “The Last of Us” dominated with four awards, while “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty” and “The Mandalorian” each received one.  

In the Outstanding Visual Effects in a Special Venue Project, the result was a tie between “Postcard From Earth,” the immersive film directed by Darren Aronofsky and made for the Sphere venue in Las Vegas, and “Rembrandt Immersive Artwork.”

The film winner at the VES Awards has gone on to win the VFX Oscar 12 times in the last 21 years, but only three times in the last nine years and only once in a seven-year stretch between 2015 and 2021.

The ceremony took place at the Beverly Hilton Hotel and was hosted by comedian and actor Jay Pharoah. The ceremony included the special presentation of the VES Award for Creative Excellence to “Star Trek” star William Shatner, while visual effects producer Joyce Cox received the VES Lifetime Achievement Award.

The winners:

Outstanding Visual Effects in a Photoreal Feature: “The Creator”
Jay Cooper
Julian Levi
Ian Comley
Charmaine Chan
Neil Corbould

Outstanding Supporting Visual Effects in a Photoreal Feature: “Nyad”
Jake Braver
Fiona Campbell Westgate
R. Christopher White
Mohsen Mousavi

Outstanding Visual Effects in an Animated Feature: “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse”
Alan Hawkins
Christian Hejnal
Michael Lasker
Matt Hausman

Outstanding Visual Effects in a Photoreal Episode: “The Last of Us,” Season 1: “Infected”
Alex Wang
Sean Nowlan
Stephen James
Simon Jung
Joel Whist

Outstanding Supporting Visual Effects in a Photoreal Episode: “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty,” Season 2: “BEAT LA”
Raymond McIntyre Jr.
Victor DiMichina
Javier Menéndez Platas
Damien Stantina

Outstanding Visual Effects in a Real-Time Project: “Alan Wake 2”
Janne Pulkkinen
Johannes Richter
Daniel Kończyk
Damian Olechowski

Outstanding Visual Effects in a Commercial: Coca-Cola: “Masterpiece”
Ryan Knowles
Antonia Vlasto
Gregory McKneally
Dan Yargici

Outstanding Visual Effects in a Special Venue Project
(tie)
“Postcard From Earth”
Aruna Inversin
Eric Wilson
Corey Turner
William George

“Rembrandt Immersive Artwork”
Andrew McNamara
Sebastian Read
Andrew Kinnear
Sam Matthews

Outstanding Animated Character in a Photoreal Feature: “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3”: Rocket
Nathan McConnel
Andrea De Martis
Antony Magdalinidis
Rachel Williams

Outstanding Animated Character in an Animated Feature: “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse”: Spot
Christopher Mangnall
Craig Feifarek
Humberto Rosa
Nideep Varghese

Outstanding Animated Character in an Episode, Commercial, Game Cinematic or Real-Time Project: “The Last of Us,” “Endure & Survive”: Bloater
Gino Acevedo
Max Telfer
Dennis You
Fabio Leporelli

Outstanding Created Environment in a Photoreal Feature: “The Creator”: Floating Village
John Seru
Guy Williams
Vincent Techer

Timothée Maron

Outstanding Created Environment in an Animated Feature: “Spider Man: Across the Spider-Verse”: Mumbattan City
Taehyun Park
YJ Lee
Pepe Orozco
Kelly Han

Outstanding Created Environment in an Episode, Commercial, Game Cinematic or Real-Time Project: “The Last of Us”: Post-Outbreak Boston
Melaina Mace
Adrien Lambert
Juan Carlos Barquet
Christopher Anciaume

Outstanding Virtual Cinematography in a CG Project: “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3”
Joanna Davison
Cheyana Wilkinson
Michael Cozens
Jason Desjarlais

Outstanding Model in a Photoreal or Animated Project: “The Creator”: Nomad
Oliver Kane
Mat Monro
Florence Green
Serban Ungureanu

Outstanding Effects Simulations in a Photoreal Feature: “The Creator”
Ludovic Ramisandraina
Raul Essig
Mathieu Chardonnet
Lewis Taylor

Outstanding Effects Simulations in an Animated Feature: “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse”
Pav Grochola
Filippo Maccari
Naoki Kato
Nicola Finizio

Outstanding Effects Simulations in an Episode, Commercial, Game Cinematic or Real-Time Project: “The Mandalorian,” Season 3: Lake Monster Attack Water
Travis Harkleroad
Florian Witzel
Rick Hankins
Aron Bonar

Outstanding Compositing & Lighting in a Feature: “The Creator”: Bar
Phil Prates
Min Kim
Nisarg Suthar
Toshiko Miura

Outstanding Compositing and Lighting in an Episode: “The Last of Us,” “Endure and Survive”: Infected Horde Battle
Matthew Lumb
Ben Roberts
Ben Campbell
Quentin Hema

Outstanding Compositing & Lighting in a Commercial: Coca-Cola: “Masterpiece”
Ryan Knowles
Greg Mckneally
Taran Spear
Jordan Dunstall

Outstanding Special (Practical) Effects in a Photoreal Project: “Oppenheimer”
Scott Fisher
James Rollins
Mario Vanillo

Emerging Technology Award: “The Flash”: Volumetric Capture
Stephan Trojansky
Thomas Ganshorn
Oliver Pilarski
Lukas Lepicovsky

Outstanding Visual Effects in a Student Project (award sponsored by Autodesk): “Silhouette”
Alexis Lafuente
Antoni Nicolaï
Chloé Stricher
Elliot Dreuille

The post ‘The Creator’ Wins 5 Categories to Top Visual Effects Society Awards appeared first on TheWrap.