2025 Oscar predictions: A November survey of a deeply unsettled race

The 2025 Academy Awards finally have a host (and a great one at that) in beloved comedian Conan O’Brien, but trying to figure out the nominations is still a head-scratcher at this point in awards season.

In part due to the lingering effects of the 2023 Hollywood strikes and in part due to just how funky a year this is, no film can claim to be the de-facto frontrunner for Best Picture in the way Oppenheimer unquestionably could in 2023 and Everything Everywhere All At Once arguably could in 2022.

Honestly, only a handful of films this year even feel like safe bets for a Best Picture nomination, much less an outright win. There is too much left for us to discover, with precursor nominations more intriguing this year than in years past.

We don’t know how much the 2024 election results will factor into how Academy voters feel, and we don’t know how much stock to put in domestic box office performance or American sentiment in general as the voting body skews more international every year. This makes the horse race to nomination morning much more interesting than in recent memory, but it makes predicting how this goes much more challenging.

Quite frankly, we don’t have much to go off of right now outside of a few films that would most likely make the cut in any Oscar season. With a hat-tip to The Hollywood Reporter‘s Scott Feinberg and his excellent contender database for his prediction list, let’s go through the big eight categories.