2025 Oscars Predictions

The Academy is a week away from awarding their Oscars to some of 2024’s best films. So what better way to celebrate the occasion than by predicting the winners for most categories? Let’s review some of my predictions to determine who will win and come up short! Feel free to do the same at home to be as surprised, pleased, or disappointed as I might be.

Best Costume Design - Nosferatu

Notice the effort put into recreating 19th-century clothing on screen. It takes so much work to make it happen and be so consistent. Wicked and Conclave may similarly encapsulate the aesthetics they were going for, but it takes impeccable costume design to go from encapsulating its subject to being a straight vibe.

Best Music (Original Song) - Never Too Late from Elton John: Never Too Late

It’s Elton John. The song from his documentary film being nominated is enough to know it will win. If they don’t supply the EGOT-winner with another Oscar, it will be Sing Sing’s Like a Bird…because I don’t see Emilia Perez winning with either of its two nominated songs with how bad of a rap they’ve gotten publicly.

Best Music (Original Score) - The Brutalist

The only two films that arguably have a fighting chance for this category are The Brutalist and The Wild Robot. Yes, Wicked was nominated, but it had its time in the limelight when it became known as a musical before being adapted into a two-part film. While The Wild Robot features a fantastic soundtrack supplementing its adventure, its exclusion from Original Song makes me hesitant. That, and The Brutalist’s soundtrack is simple yet effective and includes one of the best film themes of the year.

Best Cinematography, Production Design, Sound, and Visual Effects - Dune: Part Two

Despite its lack of nods for more prestigious categories, Dune: Part Two was a cinematic experience. The film was shot entirely with IMAX cameras and had Greig Fraser helping bring Denis Villeneuve’s vision to life. No other 2024 film carried the same weight and gravitas that Fraser, Villeneuve, and the entire production crew did to Dune. Perhaps its greater ambition and vision, especially compared to its precursor, will hand it the victory.

Best Writing (Adapted Screenplay) - Conclave

Dune: Part Two’s allusive exclusion from the category left A Complete Unknown, Conclave, Emilia Perez, Nickel Boys, and Sing Sing to duke it out for glory. With how polarizing Emilia Perez is with its writing and the less-than-noteworthy A Complete Unknown, three remain on the chopping block. However, with Conclave’s larger presence in the Best Picture race, it’s safe to say it will take the Oscar. That said, don’t count out any of the three, as each has been praised for how their story is told in the moment-to-moment details.

Best Actress in a Supporting Role - Zoe Saldana for Emilia Perez

This category will likely go to Felicity Jones, Zoe Saldana, or Ariana Grande. All actresses were front and center in The Brutalist, Emilia Perez, and Wicked, respectively, and the films would not be the same without them. However, the Academy dug their heels in with nominations for Emilia Perez, so the Oscar will likely go to Zoe Saldana. Now, that’s not to say her performance isn’t great. Like all great actors, they do the best they can with the material they’re given. The film she stars in may be polarizing, but it often takes a great actor to save a film, and perhaps Saldana achieved that in her role. Then again, only time will tell.

Best Actress in a Leading Role - Mikey Madison for Anora

All things considered, Lead Actress is in a tight race this year. All nominees give honorable performances, but the clear standouts are Fernanda Torres, Demi Moore, and Mikey Madison. Torres plays a big part in her performance in I’m Still Here, which is the primary reason behind the film’s presence in awards season and the general movie zeitgeist. Demi Moore and Mikey Madison gave break-out performances in films that would have likely been overlooked by the Academy for their dark subject matters. However, with pivotal wins in other prestigious awards, Mikey Madison will take the Oscar. Her dedication to her performance has been heartfelt and respectful towards who and what she represented, delivering on some of the film's best sequences and subtext.

Best Actor in a Supporting Role - Guy Pearce for The Brutalist

This category has some heavy-hitting performances: Kieran Culkin and Jeremy Strong encapsulate their characters so profoundly that their movie’s lead companions bounce off them so poignantly. However, Guy Pearce’s performance as Harrison Lee Van Buren overshadows them all, towering over them with a demeanor and strife that carries The Brutalist’s approach to the American Dream. Pearce also soaks up the atmosphere every time he’s on screen and has an addicting conviction brought to the role that makes Van Buren such a fascinating character to dissect and analyze.

Best Actor in a Leading Role - Adrien Brody for The Brutalist

For every supporting actor, there’s always a lead actor who fends for themselves and shines through as a movie’s pivotal driving force. This year, Adrien Brody brought his A-game amidst a pool of nominations worth the Oscar win. It takes a heartfelt performance to win people over, but Brody’s gritty and down-to-earth performance of László Tóth is the grandest and best-executed centerpiece for a film this awards season.

Best Editing and Writing (Original Screenplay) - Sean Baker for Anora

Sean Baker has been an unconventional favorite this awards season, one of few directors who writes and edits their films. For that, the Academy will at the very least award him with Editing and Original Screenplay, especially considering his one-two punch brought the movie to universal acclaim and put it in the hunt for Best Picture. That said, I don’t expect his second one-two punch with Best Director or Best Picture, which I have going for another auteur filmmaker.

Best Directing - Brady Corbet for The Brutalist

It often takes a great and respectable director to help create such a profound movie experience, and Corbet single-handedly delivered one of the year’s best films. Its competitors did similar, with The Substance’s Coralie Fargeat taking a nod for a film that otherwise wouldn’t be in the running for Best Picture without her. James Mangold and Sean Baker also brought their experience from previous works to their most recent, culminating in two films, Anora, and A Complete Unknown, that feel polished and like a well-oiled machine. However, Corbet pushed the needle and crafted a profound narrative encompassing the American Dream, and a filmmaker managing that almost always wins come awards season. However, Anora and Baker could easily steal the win from under them after its success at the Producer’s and Director’s Guild Awards.

Best Animated Feature - The Wild Robot

The best animated features from 2024 were The Wild Robot and Flow. While the ladder has picked up several wins in this year’s awards season, the Academy has an extensive tendency to award English-speaking animations an Oscar. The only instances where it wasn’t the case were with Spirited Away in 2002 and The Boy and the Heron last year–both from Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli. Because of that, I bite my tongue on Flow winning, especially since the Academy often picks the more accessible films of the year in this category. I also bite my tongue on Inside Out 2 because, despite being the highest-grossing movie of 2024, it didn’t push the medium as much as The Wild Robot or Flow has. The Wild Robot, by contrast, is visually stunning, provocative, and well-edited, which no other film from this year’s nominations has done as incredibly as it has.

Best International Feature Film - Emilia Perez

As much as I’m Still Here has touched the hearts and souls of people the world over with its focus on censorship and dictatorship, Emilia Perez has thirteen total nominations compared to I’m Still Here’s three. Critics and the Academy love how unconventional Emilia Perez’s approach to its material is, arguably more than people do with I’m Still Here being a political drama. Plus, Emilia Perez will have to win a(nother) category that isn’t Best Picture.

Best Picture - The Brutalist

2024 was a fascinating year for filmmaking, as almost every universally acclaimed film was produced by under-the-radar filmmakers. To me, The Brutalist is the most acclaimed film nominated by the Academy this year. Granted, it’s not the most nominated film at the 2025 Oscars, but Emilia Perez only pushed the needles of critics. Both films are unconventional and different, but Emilia Perez was different in an incredibly polarizing manner. The Brutalist was different–we have not gotten an intermission in an acclaimed movie since 1982’s Gandhi. It’s an epic that explicitly calls out the American Dream when the concept has fallen into a gray area. The film has pushed the needle in a positive and accessible fashion, and that’s the edge it has over movies like Emilia Perez, Anora, or Nickel Boys. Therefore, it has the best chance of taking gold over all its contemporaries, despite Anora becoming a late-stage favorite after winning in the category at similarly prestigious awards shows.

Please note: certain categories are not covered because of underlying inexperience in what is to be considered.

Categories Not Covered:

Best Makeup and Hairstyling

Best Documentary (Feature)

Best Documentary (Short Subject)

Best Short Film (Live-Action)

Best Short Film (Animated)