Awards season preview: the early contenders and why some titles are skipping a festival launch | Features

With just under five months until the Oscar nominations are announced on January 21, 2027, Hollywood is already fixated on The Odyssey and whether its multi-category campaign can overtake the record haul of 16 nominations for Warner Bros’ Sinners from last season. It could well do, given that the adaptation of Homer’s 3,000-year-old epic is a critical darling from a revered writer/director who has made a lot of money for some of Hollywood’s most powerful figures.

Nolan’s films employ hundreds of people, which always makes studio executives and guild leaders elated, and the UK filmmaker brokered a peace deal of sorts when, in his role as president of the Directors Guild of America, he helped to lead the Guild to a recent four-year contract with the studios and streamers. These accomplishments matter because campaigns for Oscars and other awards can become popularity contests orchestrated at the behest of deep-pocketed backers.

Elsewhere, Amazon MGM Studios is high on Phil Lord and Christopher Miller’s Project Hail Mary starring Ryan Gosling, which grossed more than $683m worldwide since opening in March. The filmmakers and Gosling make people a lot of money, too, and the sci-fi adventure will get a gigantic push. And don’t count out Michael, the Michael Jackson biopic from Antoine Fuqua that had audiences dancing in the aisles when it opened in April and surged past $1bn at the global box office to become Lionsgate’s biggest hit. Universal distributed internationally.

After Cannes announced its Holly­wood-lite roster, the conversation turned towards how US studios have no appetite for the slings and arrows of critical opinion. Warner Bros’ Joker: Folie à Deux crashed and burned in Venice two years ago, with studio execs by and enormous preferring to keep their biggest films away from festivals – even if they know they have something special, like last season’s Oscar champions One Battle After Another and Sinners.

“For certain movies there’s no upside in going to a festival,” says an awards strategist. “And it’s so expensive to bring someone.” Stumping up for private jets and fancy accommodation at one or more festivals for A-listers like Digger star Tom Cruise, Project Hail Mary’s Gosling, or Matt Damon and his cohort from The Odyssey can run into the hundreds of thousands. “Only take your film to a festival if you feel confident it’s going to be critically acclaimed.”

Warner Bros has steered clear of the major festivals with its obscure comedy Digger, despite director Alejandro G Iñarritu’s many career premieres at Venice. A satire about the climate crisis is a risky proposition – and with a budget pegged at a reported $200m, Warner Bros and Legendary need it to make money. It will premiere instead as the Royal Film Performance in London on October 2.

Similarly, the studio appears to have opted to keep Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Three away from festivals and has scheduled a December 18 release. The Timothée Chalamet and Zendaya-starrer is nonetheless being lined up for a major awards push as the sci-fi trilogy reaches its conclusion.

At time of writing, Sony Pictures’ The Social Network follow-up The Social Reckoning, written and directed by Aaron Sorkin and starring Mikey Madison, Jeremy Strong and Jeremy Allen White, was scheduled for an October 9 release with no squeak of a festival premiere – unless it lands a surprise screening at New York Film Festival (NYFF, September 25-October 12). The same goes for Netflix’s The Further Mis-Adventures Of Cliff Booth, a spin-off from Once Upon A Time In Holly­wood. David Fincher is directing from Quentin Tarantino’s screenplay and Brad Pitt reprises his role as stuntman Booth in a film that is scheduled to open exclusively in Imax cinemas on November 25 before debuting on the platform on December 23.

After declaring it will compete at the Oscars and claiming to have fielded offers from all the top fall festivals, Neon has not yet elaborated on release plans for Luca Guadagnino’s Artificial, a psychological thriller of sorts about OpenAI founder Sam Altman, played by Andrew Garfield. Amazon MGM Studios greenlit the feature only to offload it after its parent company struck a strategic partnership with OpenAI.

The Cannes boost

For more modest awards season hopefuls, let alone titles that arrive without much fanfare or prior awareness outside their country, festivals are incredibly vital. The consensus still favours the Croisette – particularly for international feature film contenders and actors and directors from arthouse titles – due in enormous part to the Academy’s growing international profile. Savvy distributors such as Neon have become highly adept at parlaying Croisette hits into deep Oscar runs, as evidenced by Sentimental Value and Anora in the past two cycles.

“Cannes is the top dog,” says one campaigner. “Look at the amount of best picture nominees that have come out of there versus Venice in the last five years.” Three Palme d’Or winners – Anora, Anatomy Of A Fall and Triangle Of Sadness – have garnered best picture nominations over that time period, compared to one Venice Golden Lion winner, 2023’s Poor Things.

This was abundantly clear when Jordan Firstman’s Un Certain Regard selection Club Kid and Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi’s La Bola Negra in Competition sparked bidding wars. A24 acquired Club Kid for the world, and Netflix took US and Canada for joint best director winner La Bola Negra.

A24 sees Firstman’s queer family drama as a feel-good story and has high hopes, while Netflix is mounting a multi-category push for La Bola Negra, which examines Spanish queer culture across generations and is inspired by an unfinished work from early 20th-century Spanish writer Federico Garcia Lorca. The streamer is so bullish it has extended the exclusive theatrical run to an eye-popping 47 days in the US, running from October 16 until the platform debut on December 4.

Nobody is discounting the crucial role Venice and Toronto play in creating buzz at a critical time in the awards season calendar, both for launching splashy premieres and getting contenders in front of North American critics and voters. “You’re going to see many films get a boost from Venice and Telluride,” says one strategist.

Venice is where the aforementioned Ink and Wild Horse Nine kick off their campaigns, as do A24’s Primetime starring Robert Pattinson as the host of US true crime show To Catch A Predator, Florian Zeller’s psychological thriller Bunker (Sony Classics has US rights) with Cruz and Javier Bardem, and Lee Chang-dong’s South Korean Oscar submission Possible Love at Netflix.

TIFF is a respected launchpad, even if films can get lost in the enormous lineup. But they can also pop, as seen last year with Curry Barker’s $500m global horror smash Obsession, which Focus Features acquired at the festival and will push in several categories including best actress for Inde Navarrette. “TIFF is a good place if you’re more commercial because it’s more of a consumer festival as opposed to Telluride, which draws more of an upscale tastemaker crowd,” notes a strategist.

TIFF’s People’s Choice award is gold dust. Over the last 16 years, all but two winners have earned a best picture Oscar nomination, including Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet last season. Three winners – Nomadland, 12 Years A Slave and Green Book – have gone on to claim the Academy Award for best picture. Green Book director Peter Farrelly’s I Play Rocky, about the making of the Sylvester Stallone boxing drama, premieres at TIFF and is the type of uplifting selection the Toronto audience likes to reward. Amazon MGM Studios holds US rights.

Another could be TIFF’s opening night world premiere Being Heumann, which recounts the true-life story of a disability activist and is the latest from filmmaker Sian Heder and Apple after Coda won the best picture Oscar in 2022.

Neon will build momentum for its Palme d’Or winner Fjord from Cristian Mungiu (the company’s seventh consecutive top prize in Cannes since 2019) through Telluride and TIFF slots. Later in September, the North American premiere of Paper Tiger, Neon’s Croisette world premiere from James Gray, will open NYFF.

Mubi has secured New York berths for Pawel Pawlikowski’s Cannes premiere Fatherland and Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Minotaur (don’t be surprised if both turn up at Telluride prior to Toronto), and Searchlight premieres Pedro Pascal as a cellist in Behemoth! from Tony Gilroy. Focus, meanwhile, will debut its awards hopeful Elsinore starring Andrew Scott in Telluride.

Double shots

Penélope Cruz will receive the TIFF Special Tribute Award and has a busy season ahead with an anticipated lead role in Lido-bound Bunker. In the supporting category, the Spanish star’s performances in The Invite and La Bola Negra could see her benefit from an Academy rule change that allows actors to earn two nominations in the same category (provided both performances earn among the top five votes).

The tweak is designed to preclude campaigners from toggling contenders between supporting and lead categories to avoid a vote split. Germany’s Sandra Huller has also had her hands full, earning the Berlin Silver Bear for Rose and acclaim for the lead role in Cannes hit Fatherland, plus supporting parts in Project Hail Mary and the upcoming Digger.

The other gigantic change to the rules has opened up eligibility in the international feature film category to non-English-language winners of the top prizes at six festivals: Sundance World Cinema Competition (drama and documentary), Berlin’s Golden Bear (Ilker Catak’s Yellow Letters) and Cannes’ Palme d’Or (Fjord), and winners of the Venice Golden Lion, TIFF Platform award and Busan best film award.

Most strategists who spoke to Screen International welcomed the rule change. “It’s good there are other ways to qualify films now, giving filmmakers more opportunities,” says one. However, while another strategist welcomed the chance for some filmmakers to circumvent the existing national selection committees, particularly those who are viewed unfavourably by their home country for political or personal reasons, they expressed concerns.

“It’s very Global North,” says the strategist of the qualifying festivals. “Where is Africa, South America, India, Southeast Asia, China? It’s heavily white, and it’s got two festivals (Venice and Cannes) that are well known for not showing the work of female filmmakers or of filmmakers from underserved communities.”

It is understood that the Academy will review the list of festivals each year. However, another pressure point could blow up if a festival winner is not selected as its country’s official submission (although in theory it could be). Will a selection committee feel compelled to reconsider its choice? Or will it co-ordinate with the team behind the festival winner to ensure both titles try to get onto the Academy’s shortlist that comes out on December 15, pitting one against the other?

The window for eligible qualifying festivals in the current cycle is October 1, 2025-September 30, 2026 (Busan falls outside the dates but an exception has been made this year). That is the same timeframe when official national submissions must have screened theatrically for seven consecutive days in their country of origin.

Every strategist who spoke to Screen said they felt that in fairness to the Academy, which established a taskforce to debate the rule change before announcing it, the body is trying to create more opportunities for filmmakers.

For this cycle at least, campaigners believe the tried-and-tested national selection committee choices will dominate the category. Ones to watch – but not yet declared official submissions – include La Bola Negra, Fjord, Minotaur (for France) and Fatherland.

Some of these films could even go deeper into awards season, if their backers have the confidence to go up against Odysseus, Paul Atreides et al. That said, there are no guarantees, even for a commercial smash anointed as the one to beat six months out from the ceremony.

“It can be very stressful when a conversation starts in the summer that puts you on top,” notes one strategist. “Sustaining that kind of momentum is never easy, but if anyone has proven they can do it, it’s Nolan.” 

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