The reason this is coming up is because of an announcement in Variety yesterday that actress Chase Infiniti will be campaigning for the Lead Actress Oscar, rather than (as some had assumed) for Supporting Actress. The Oscars are unique, and unlike, say, the Tony Awards or the SAG Awards, they don't technically have a rule that you have to be nominated in a specific category-you can be campaigned in a category, but there's no pre-marked ballots, so you can also end up in a different category than you were assuming. This happened to both Kate Winslet in The Reader and Keisha Castle-Hughes in Whale Rider, where both were initially campaigned in the supporting category before ultimately ending up in lead (with Winslet even winning). That being said, normally Oscar acquiesces, and so if Infiniti is nominated, it's probable she'll be nominated for Best Lead Actress, rather than in the supporting category (for those category fraud watchers, this is the correct choice-Infiniti is arguably the main character in the film, and is definitely not supporting).
But Infiniti stepping into that field leaves room for two other women in her film (Teyana Taylor and Regina Hall) to be campaigned in supporting. The supporting categories historically are kinder to nominating two nominees from the same film (the last time two leads were nominated from the same film in the same gendered category was 1991). But perhaps more importantly, the Supporting Actress category has a dearth of obvious contenders this season, and so Taylor & Hall being in the film that (this far out) appears to be the Best Picture frontrunner will surely help them (we're not supposed to say this according to Twitter, but it does appear to be a weak year for the category).
If Infiniti, Taylor, & Hall are all nominated (a huge if, particularly Hall who has limited screen-time even if she does marvelous things with it), they could be joined by their three Oscar-winning male costars: Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, & Benicio del Toro. Of the three, del Toro (the most low-key performance of the three) is the hardest sell, but his Oscar history (the best thing to try to get an Oscar nomination is already having another Oscar nomination-the Academy likes to repeat itself) will certainly help him in that regard. If all six of these individuals were to be nominated, One Battle After Another would become the first film in the nearly 100-year history of the Academy to get 30% of the acting nominations.
Even if they get five, they'd still be tying for the most, and joining just nine other films (listed chronologically): Mrs. Miniver, All About Eve, From Here to Eternity, On the Waterfront, Peyton Place, Tom Jones, Bonnie and Clyde, The Godfather, Part II, and Network. It's worth noting a few things about these. First is that (weirdly) not all of them won Best Picture-3 of the six (Peyton Place, Bonnie and Clyde, and Network) were nominated, but didn't win. Second, not all of them actually won acting prizes-both Tom Jones and Peyton Place came home empty-handed even with five nominations, so a win is never guaranteed in these circumstances.
And third, some of them were in the running for the position One Battle After Another is in now, though not all of them. While all of these films had other actors in them (this isn't a Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf situation where all of the principle cast got included), a few of them like Bonnie and Clyde and On the Waterfront they nominated literally all of the cast members that were really of any import in the film. There are other films where there are other primary parts (All About Eve & Mrs. Miniver) where there are other key roles, but none of them really were ever going to gain traction with the Academy.
The other five, though, were in the same boat as One Battle After Another, where there was at least one other contender clearly from the film who could've gotten included (but ultimately didn't). While From Here to Eternity (where one could argue future Oscar-winner Ernest Borgnine was an option in Supporting Actor as the film's primary villain) didn't get a major nomination elsewhere and neither did The Godfather, Part II (where it's an easy call to say that either Diane Keaton or John Cazale should've been in the running), the remaining three films all got precursors. The Golden Globes nominated Mildred Dunnock (Peyton Place) and Joan Greenwood (Tom Jones), while the BAFTA's made room for Robert Duvall (Network), none of which made it into Oscar's Top 20. Any of these six actors could've gotten their film over the hump to an additional nomination, and the all-time record.
Do I think One Battle After Another will do it? Honestly, probably not. I think five is much more likely, but I wouldn't be predicting Hall or del Toro at this juncture if I was going on record...a far likelier claim to fame would be nominations in each category, which has happened occasionally through the years, the last time being American Hustle, and seems to be where this is headed. American Hustle is arguably the last time we got conceivably close to 5 nominations for a film, given that Jeremy Renner (coming off of two fresh Oscar nominations at the time) was conceivably in the running (though not really-his nomination would've been a genuine surprise); you could also make an argument that Everything Everywhere All at Once got close (but again, that would've required a come-out-of-nowhere citation for James Hong). One Battle After Another, quite honestly-is already in rarefied company. It's arguably the first film in my lifetime to look solidly plausible at getting 5 nominations. Whether it hits five (or six)...we've got a long awards season ahead of us to find out.
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