With crucial fall film festivals approaching, the time has come to look ahead at the 2023 Oscar race. What film could win Best Picture? Does Netflix have a shot? Will Steven Spielberg score the prize for the first time since the '90s? Let's take a (very early) look at the possible field:
Everything Everywhere All At Once is probably the movie that film critics will be most passionate about this season, though it doesn't seem like a done deal that it will be nominated. But can the Academy really ignore one of the most well-reviewed, creative films of the past few years, let alone 2022?
The imaginative multiverse adventure starring Michelle Yeoh is both a critical darling and a major crowd-pleaser, having become studio A24's highest-grossing movie ever. The big question is whether the film, which among other things includes a sequence that heavily involves butt plugs, is a bit too out there and chaotic for the Academy to embrace. Then again, it wasn't that long ago that this group gave Best Picture to a film about a woman who has sex with a fish.
At the very least, Everything Everywhere should net a well-deserved Best Actress nomination for Yeoh, and a screenplay nod also looks likely. Whether this is the universe where it competes for Best Picture, though, remains to be seen.
After Marriage Story was a Best Picture nominee and scored Laura Dern an Oscar in 2020, Noah Baumbach's follow-up is White Noise, an adaptation of the 1985 novel that has been described as unfilmable. We'll see about that!
Adam Driver stars in the film as a professor of Hitler studies, whose life is "upended after a horrifying nearby accident creates an airborne toxic event of frightening and unknowable proportions." Baumbach's partner, Greta Gerwig, also plays the wife of Driver's character.
White Noise will debut at the Venice International Film Festival before opening the New York Film Festival in September. An announcement from the latter described White Noise as "one of the year's most gratifyingly ambitious American films," a "richly layered, entirely unexpected work of contemporary satire" that combines comedy and horror. It's being released by Netflix as the streamer's years-long quest for Best Picture glory continues. But hey, if the film doesn't make much noise, that's okay; Baumbach and Gerwig will obviously be back to win Best Picture in 2024 with Barbie.
Florian Zeller's The Father was a somewhat surprising Best Picture contender in 2021, so his follow-up, appropriately titled The Son, is worth keeping an eye on.
The Father was based on part of a trilogy of plays written by Zeller, and The Son is an adaptation of another play in that series. Starring Hugh Jackman, it "follows a family as it falls apart and tries to come back together again," as 17-year-old Nicholas (Zen McGrath) moves in with his father (Jackman) years after his parents' divorce, per Sony's plot description.
Laura Dern and Vanessa Kirby also star, and Anthony Hopkins returns for a role after winning Best Actor for The Father. But most of the early buzz has centered around Jackman, who pundits think could be a strong Best Actor contender based on the source material. In fact, it wouldn't be surprising if The Son followed a similar trajectory to The Father, scoring a Best Picture nod as its lead wins a trophy. When The Son premieres at the Venice International Film Festival in September, though, we'll get a better sense of how strong a contender it is beyond Jackman.
Peter Farrelly shocked the world with a Best Picture win for Green Book, and to the likely chagrin of Film Twitter, his next movie could also be in the mix.
Set amid the Vietnam War, the film tells the true story of Chickie Donohue (Zac Efron), a Marine Corps veteran who travels to Vietnam on a mission to deliver beer to soldiers. Based on the trailer, it looks like the kind of inspiring, feel-good true story the Academy could eat up (as critics roll their eyes) the same way they did Green Book. It's debuting at the Toronto International Film Festival, where Green Book received a key boost in the Oscar race by winning a People's Choice Award in 2018.
There's one other reason the film shouldn't be discounted: It's being released by Apple TV+. The streamer pushed CODA to a Best Picture win this year, and The Greatest Beer Run Ever looks like the contender they'll put that kind of effort behind in 2023. So yes, it's time to brace for the possibility of there being two different Best Picture-winning films directed by the guy who made Dumb and Dumber.
Based on Miriam Toews' 2018 novel, this drama from Sarah Polley follows women in a religious colony who "struggle to reconcile their faith with a series of sexual assaults committed by the colony's men," per Deadline. It stars a cast of awards favorites, including Frances McDormand, Jessie Buckley, Rooney Mara, and Claire Foy.
Toews' novel, which was inspired by real events in Bolivia, was one of the most well-received books of that year. As Vox's Constance Grady explained at the time, the book offered a "kind of allegory for the position in which women find themselves in the wake of #MeToo: Something awful has happened. The perpetrators have been brought to light. So now what?" The film version, then, has potential to be the kind of harrowing #MeToo-era story that could make a big splash with the Academy, likely for its performances but potentially throughout numerous categories.
It would also be a bit of a comeback for Polley, who hasn't directed a feature film since the acclaimed 2012 documentary Stories We Tell. United Artists will premiere the movie at the Toronto International Film Festival in September before it opens in December.
Alejandro González Iñárritu won Best Picture with Birdman in 2015, and his follow-up, The Revenant, was nominated. He's also a rare filmmaker to win Best Director twice in two consecutive years, so "new Iñárritu movie" is enough to catch any Oscar pundit's eyes at this point.
This one is described as a "nostalgic comedy" from the Mexican director, which "chronicles the story of a renowned Mexican journalist and documentary filmmaker, who returns home and works through an existential crisis as he grapples with his identity, familial relationships, the folly of his memories as well as the past of his country."
It sounds like it could be sort of a repeat of Roma. And like that movie, which was loosely based on the director's childhood in Mexico City and surprisingly came up short of Best Picture to Green Book, Bardo is being released by Netflix. After The Power of the Dog's loss to CODA, though, whether the streamer can manage a Best Picture win anytime soon remains a very real question - and it may not help that Bardo is reportedly three hours long.
Could the Academy underline Harvey Weinstein's fall from king of the Oscars to convicted rapist by giving a movie about his crimes the Best Picture trophy?
Maria Schrader directs this drama based on the true story of Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, the New York Times journalists who reported on sexual misconduct allegations against Harvey Weinstein in 2017. Like Women Talking, She Said is another #MeToo-era story with plenty of relevance, though this one has a direct connection to Hollywood and the Academy Awards itself.
Carey Mulligan and Zoe Kazan star, and another Best Actress nod for Mulligan seems possible. But let's not forget another film about reporters uncovering sexual abuse, Spotlight, won Best Picture in 2016. Besides, the Academy could jump at the opportunity to symbolically repudiate Weinstein himself - the man who helped turn the Best Picture Oscar race into what it is today - by giving it the win.
She Said will premiere at the New York Film Festival before opening in November. Check out the trailer here.
Sam Mendes' 1917 was the Best Picture frontrunner for most of the 2020 Oscar season, only to be a victim of the Parasite wave in the end. But Mendes has another shot in 2023 with Empire of Light.
The film is described as a "powerful and poignant story about human connection and the magic of cinema," which is set around an old cinema in England during the 1980s. Between films like The Artist and The Shape of Water, we all know the Academy absolutely loves movies about the magic of the movies, so in that sense, this could actually be an even stronger Best Picture contender than 1917. The cast includes past Oscar winners Colin Firth and Olivia Colman, the latter of whom has racked up an impressive three nominations since 2019 alone.
Searchlight Pictures, which most recently won Best Picture with Nomadland, is premiering Empire of Light at the Toronto International Film Festival in September before it hits theaters in December.
Damien Chazelle's La La Land won the Best Picture Oscar in 2017 ... for about two minutes before the right winner, Moonlight, was revealed. But could Babylon give Chazelle the prize for real this time? Starring Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie, the film is set in 1920s Hollywood amid the industry's transition to talkies from silent films.
As previously mentioned, movies about Hollywood and the magic of movies are like catnip for the Academy, and the Oscars even already gave Best Picture to a movie about the silent-film-to-talkies transition with The Artist. There's only one problem: rumors suggest the film is quite graphic to the point that it could even receive an NC-17 rating, which may turn the Academy off. Plus, it's allegedly around three hours, and Chazelle's last film, First Man, disappointed at the Oscars.
Even so, unless it's a complete whiff, expect Babylon to be a contender given that Oscar-friendly subject matter - and don't be surprised if it scores Robbie her first Oscar, the same way Chazelle's La La Land did for Emma Stone. The film opens on Christmas Day.
And we arrive at the presumed Best Picture frontrunner going into the season before anyone's even seen it: Steven Spielberg's The Fabelmans.
Spielberg movies have had mixed success at the Oscars in recent years, and none has won Best Picture since Schindler's List in 1994. But The Fabelmans may have what it takes to go over the finish line, especially considering it looks like the most personal work of the director's career.
The film is loosely based on Spielberg's own childhood, a "coming-of-age story about a young man's discovery of a shattering family secret and an exploration of the power of movies to help us see the truth about each other and ourselves," per the official plot synopsis.
That's right: it's yet another contender about the Magic of the Movies. But this one could also benefit from voters' desire to honor one of the greatest directors who has ever lived near the end of the 75-year-old's career. Starring Michelle Williams, Paul Dano, and Seth Rogen, the film opens in November. We'll find out if its frontrunner status is truly justified after the Toronto International Film Festival premiere in September.