As we approach the halfway point of 2025, the hosts of Little Gold Men spent this week’s episode checking in on the most likely Oscar contenders to h
As we approach the halfway point of 2025, the hosts of Little Gold Men spent this week’s episode checking in on the most likely Oscar contenders to have premiered so far—as well as those still waiting in the wings. We break them all down below, where you can also listen to the episode. Just keep in mind there’s still a whole lot we don’t know just yet.
BEST PICTURE & DIRECTOR
Without question, Ryan Coogler’s Sinners is the biggest Oscar player of 2025 so far—a theatrical phenomenon that’s also been widely embraced by critics. The genre-bending vampire film only seems to become more of a juggernaut as more Academy members see it. The only question is whether it can pull off a yearlong campaign in the vein of Everything Everywhere All at Once, which was also released in the spring, and maintain the overwhelming enthusiasm that surrounded its release to make a case for itself as a front-runner.
Last year’s Cannes Film Festival launched three best-picture nominees in The Substance, Emilia Pérez, and the ultimate Oscar winner, Anora. It seems unlikely that the Croisette’s showcase will have quite as much impact this time around, especially since one distributor, Neon, will have to pick which prize-winner to put its muscle behind. Joachim Trier’s stunning family drama Sentimental Value seems most primed to gain traction as a significant best-picture player, while the Palme d’Or winner, Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just an Accident, should receive a sturdy campaign as well. Netflix also bought Richard Linklater’s Nouvelle Vague, a charming ode to the French New Wave, which could find fans.
Sundance didn’t have any clear Oscar breakouts. The festival’s best shots (relatively long ones) are two pretty but idiosyncratic films—Eva Victor’s debut feature Sorry, Baby, which A24 is releasing next week, and Clint Bentley’s searing Train Dreams, which Netflix picked up (but as we’ll discuss, the streamer has a busy slate). Neon also has last year’s TIFF People’s Choice Award winner, The Life of Chuck, which was released earlier this month. But the box-office was a little lighter—and the critics a bit more mixed—than the film might need to establish itself as a contender. With decent reviews and huge marketing, F1: the Movie wants to ride major summer box-office receipts into a Top Gun: Maverick–style fall campaign. It will be released in theaters next week before streaming on Apple TV+.
Otherwise, we wait. So far, we’ve seen teaser trailers for everything from Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another to Paul Greengrass’s The Lost Bus to Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, all films from past directing nominees. Netflix has Frankenstein in addition to Noah Baumbach’s Jay Kelly and Kathryn Bigelow’s A House of Dynamite, which have recently received awards-friendly release dates and already feel buoyed by positive word of mouth. Focus Features recently dated Hamnet, the first non-Marvel movie from Chloé Zhao since her Oscar-winning triumph Nomadland, and they’re also handling Yorgos Lanthimos’s Bugonia, said to land on the more accessible side of that filmmaker’s work. This tends to translate to more Oscar success for the man behind The Favourite and Poor Things. There’s also lots of excitement around Luca Guadagnino’s After the Hunt.
And that’s to say nothing of the sequels, like Avatar: Fire and Ash and Wicked: For Good, which are all but guaranteed to dominate the box office around the holidays. Nor of A24’s mysterious slate, which includes separate movies from both Safdie brothers. Speaking of which…
BEST ACTOR
A24 put out an early teaser for The Smashing Machine, Benny Safdie’s biopic of former MMA fighter Mark Kerr, that highlighted a totally transformed Dwayne Johnson in a convoluted lead role. He’s surely a first-time awards-season contender, and very possibly a first-time nominee. Josh Safdie’s Christmas release Marty Supreme, meanwhile, stars Timothée Chalamet as a ping-pong pro, and remains otherwise shrouded in secrecy. The story behind these two movies—and lead performances—is already fascinating, and will be one to watch as they converge come fall.
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