I spend a lot of time on Film Twitter, a subset of my favorite social media app, and they are wont to spout fun trivia about the potential nominees for this year's Oscars, which we will find out officially in a little over a week. This year, a lot of the conventional wisdom around who will be the nominees seems to be running counter to historical precedence (something we run into a lot in our political articles here, but not as much our awards races), and you know me...I love a good trivia list. Below I have talked through five of the biggest streak-enders that could happen on February 8th.
The Trivia: The last time that all five of the Best Director nominees were previous nominees was 1950.
How It Could Happen: 1950 is one of only two years (the other being somehow 1931-32, only the 5th Academy Awards) that all of the lineup for the Best Director field are previous nominees, but if you went completely with the frontrunners for Best Director this year, you'd end up with such a lineup. The DGA just announced Jane Campion (The Power of the Dog), Steven Spielberg (West Side Story), Paul Thomas Anderson (Licorice Pizza), Kenneth Branagh (Belfast), & Denis Villeneuve (Dune) as their contenders, all of whom are previous nominees. Even if you assume one of them falls (the DGA is rarely a carbon copy of the Oscar race-the last time it was the exact same was 2009), arguably the next most logical next option is Adam McKay (Don't Look Up), who is also a former nominee in this category. And even if Oscar goes off-the-beaten-path for this category (as they consider doing quite often), it's not like Joel Coen (The Tragedy of Macbeth), Pedro Almodovar (Parallel Mothers), or Ridley Scott (House of Gucci) aren't former nominees as well.
What Could Stop It: Honestly, not a lot. It's hard to see who the weak link is in the DGA lineup (it feels very AMPAS-friendly), and even if you stretch to make it seem like it's Spielberg or Branagh who is at risk, McKay is such an obvious sixth place it's hard not to see him filling in. If the streak isn't broken, it'll either be because King Richard (and its director Reinaldo Marcus Green) was a much stronger contender with Oscar than was assumed, or because Ryusuke Hamaguchi's Drive My Car, which has been a critical darling all season, can pull off a nomination in the vein of Cold War & Another Round by landing for a non-English film that resonated with the generally cinephile-minded Directors Branch.
The Trivia: No Best Actor field has featured all previous nominees since 1980.
How It Could Happen: The last time that this happened, it was because Oscar somehow ignored Donald Sutherland in Ordinary People (that year's Best Picture nominee) in favor of some work in movies Oscar otherwise kind of skipped. This year, the opposite would be the case, with Will Smith (King Richard), Andrew Garfield (tick tick Boom), & Benedict Cumberbatch (Power of the Dog) in Best Picture contenders who are near certain to be nominees. Add in Denzel Washington (The Tragedy of Macbeth) who has only missed once at the Oscars when he was nominated at the Globes (i.e. he's probably getting in), and you've got one slot left. The thing is, virtually all of the names that could fill it are not just former nominees, but former winners. Javier Bardem (Being the Ricardos), has dominated the precursors, Leonardo DiCaprio is headlining a starry Best Picture nominee (Don't Look Up...more on that later), Mahershala Ali (Swan Song) was a surprise Globes contender, and Nicolas Cage (Pig) is in the kind of critical darling that gets a nomination despite not a lot of heavy precursor love. Most of the contenders this year simply are former nominees.
What Could Stop It: Unlike Best Director, you don't have to stretch credulity to get a first-time nominee in this field, because the name that would disrupt the race is obvious: Peter Dinklage. Dinklage has had a lot of precursor love (Globes, Critics Choice), and is exactly the kind of name brand star who usually gets an Oscar nomination on their resumé at some point. The biggest problem for Dinklage is that MGM has royally botched his campaign by waiting too long to release Cyrano, costing the film most of its momentum. If Dinklage gets in, it'll likely be on sheer star power and a "no clear favorite" fifth nomination race, but if he doesn't get in...he should take it up with his studio.
The Trivia: Don't Look Up could become the first Best Picture nominee since 1963 to feature 5+ Oscar winners and not get an acting nomination.
How It Could Happen: It seems illogical that a movie as starry as Don't Look Up wouldn't get at least one acting nomination, right? After all, it features five former winners (Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Meryl Streep, Cate Blanchett, & Mark Rylance) and two more former nominees (Timothee Chalamet & Jonah Hill). But Don't Look Up has failed to impress beyond the top-line awards all season. DiCaprio got a gimme nomination from the Globes, but Streep missed (a rarity for the actress), and then at the SAG Awards while it was nominated for Best Cast, it couldn't get into any individual categories. As a result, unless I'm missing a cameo or something, this is the first time since How the West Was Won that a film has had five Oscar winners (at time of release) and could end up empty-handed from the acting branch.
What Could Stop It: Leonardo DiCaprio. As I just mentioned, Leo is technically in the running for this nomination, and it's possible he gets the fifth nomination for the Best Actor field over Dinklage, Cage, & Bardem. DiCaprio is an Oscar favorite (this would be his seventh acting nomination), but the heat for this nomination is barely there. That might not matter (you could argue he was losing steam for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood before he suddenly made the list), but the other three guys make way more sense on paper.
The Trivia: This is a crazy one (kudos to Will Mavity from NextBestPicture for spotting it), but Netflix could become the first studio since 1974 to get three Best Picture nominations in the same year.
How It Could Happen: It's weird this isn't more common, to be honest, particularly in recent years since the 5+ fields give more options for studios, but since the introduction of an expanded field in 2009, no studio has been able to pull off this hat trick. Unlike the above, it's less about what needs to go wrong here for the trivia to happen and more about what needs to go right as we know the three movies that have to show up in order to make this happen: The Power of the Dog, Don't Look Up, and Tick Tick Boom. All three are currently in the hunt, and I'd argue the first two are basically renting their tuxedos at this point they're so certain to make it. If Netflix gets all three, it'll land this trivia plane.
What Could Stop It: Tick Tick Boom is clearly one of those movies that is angling for the 9th or 10th spot, rather than a movie that would have been in the Top 5 in previous years. Tick Tick Boom comes armed to win (Critics Choice, Golden Globes, & PGA have all paid tribute), but in a race where probably 8 of the nominees are secure (Power of the Dog, Don't Look Up, Licorice Pizza, Belfast, West Side Story, King Richard, Dune, & CODA all feel solid), Tick Tick Boom is up against about four films (the others being Tragedy of Macbeth, House of Gucci, Drive My Car, & Being the Ricardos) that could score those final two slots. All of these films have deficits, and Tick's might be that it's a pretty tiny picture, certainly compared with Gucci, and it doesn't have the kind of "constantly talked about" word-of-mouth you'd expect from a streamer like Ricardos. I think those two are its biggest competition, but it's certainly in the hunt, and could solidify Netflix's increasingly plausible march to its first Best Picture award for Power of the Dog.
The Trivia: Disney could become the first studio ever to get three nominations for Best Animated Feature Film in the same year.
How It Could Happen: First, I want to start out on a technicality, since you could argue 2002 achieved this feat, but while two Disney films (Treasure Planet and Lilo & Stitch) were definitely the product of the studio, Spirited Away was only distributed by the film in the US, so it's not really a Disney production. That said, 2021 could make this happen. Disney has three films (Raya and the Last Dragon, Luca, and Encanto) which have shown up virtually everywhere (all got the Critics Choice, Globes, & Annie blessings). If they weren't all the same studio, you'd argue that they were all guaranteed. And the competition also seems pretty friendly to this idea: Flee and The Mitchells vs. the Machines are both the other two names we're seeing a lot, but while Flee feels immobile, Mitchells missed with the Globes, potentially make it vulnerable. That said, these are clearly the five names that the season so far points to as our nominees.
What Could Stop It: While Encanto is not only nominated but it's going to win, neither Luca (released exclusively on streaming) nor Raya (the least critically-successful of the three, the earliest release) are totally safe. Raya, in particular, seems to be the one in bronze from the studio...the question is who might replace it? Belle, a GKids production (a well-liked studio by Oscar), did reasonably well with the Annie Awards and is in theaters right now, while My Sunny Maad got a surprise Golden Globes nomination. This category has had something of a history of picking out-of-the-blue nominations at the last minute, but in recent years they've done that less...I wonder if we're about to see Disney's total takeover of this category in 2021.
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