13 March 2026
Chicago 12, Melborne City, USA
Economy

Oscar Projections Before Awards Show

A NOTE FROM SCOTT It’s time for one last check-in ahead of the 98th Academy Awards!

As my fellow pundits and I agreed this week when Gold Derby convened us for a preview of Sunday’s ceremony, all but one of the “big six” categories remain too close to call with any great degree of confidence. Hamnet’s Jessie Buckley is universally expected to win best actress, but best picture, director, actor, supporting actor and supporting actress are genuine nailbiters, and predicting them only got harder following the recent controversy at the BAFTA Awards and surprises at the Actor Awards.

It certainly feels like Sinners has late-breaking momentum, but I believe that it is my job to make picks based on facts, not feelings, and statistics continue to point toward One Battle After Another in the best picture race and Paul Thomas Anderson in the best director race. If Sinners and/or Ryan Coogler end up prevailing instead, I will be just as happy — just the like distributor of both films, Warner Bros., the co-chiefs of which I profiled in our Oscars Issue — but it will mean that the precursor awards no longer have any bearing on the Oscars itself. Indeed, no film has ever lost with the extensive portfolio of precursors that One Battle has collected.

In our annual “Who Will Win vs. Who Should Win” feature, THR’s chief film critic David Rooney makes the case for what/who he feels should win in the major categories, and I provide the rationale for what/who I predict will win. I encourage you to check out that — and the other content that I produced for our Oscars Issue, including my oral history of the crazy COVID Oscars that took place five years ago (in which Chadwick Boseman’s widow shares the speech that she intended to give before he was upset by Anthony Hopkins); the conclusions of my “investigation” into which of his two Oscars Sean Penn gave away to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy; and this year’s Brutally Honest Oscars Ballot featuring the candid voting rationale of a member of the Academy’s documentary branch.

In recent days, I’ve also gotten some inside information about the plans for Sunday’s ceremony from the Academy’s president and CEO and the telecast’s producers, which I encourage you to check out. And I hope you will also make time to watch Hollywood & The Oscars: Still Golden?, a documentary about the Oscars for which I was interviewed, and which I have already watched and found quite well done, when it airs on CNN tonight at 7 p.m. PT.

Whatever happens on Sunday, I thank you for following along this season, hope you’ll check out all of THR’s coverage on the big night and look forward to sharing with you my first Emmys forecast soon!

PLEASE REMEMBER: Scott’s forecasts do not necessarily reflect his personal preferences. His aim is not to advocate for what he thinks the members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences should do, but rather to project what they will do. He arrives at his projections by screening the films that are in contention, analyzing their campaigns, constantly checking-in with voters and studying relevant history and stats.


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