2025 Oscar nominations predictions: See contenders for Best Picture and acting, from Angelina Jolie to Colman Domingo

Remember the great Barbenheimer awards gauntlet of 2024? Maybe? Well, Entertainment Weekly's 2025 Oscar nominations predictions are here and ready to introduce a whole new (slightly less pink) crop of contenders set to duke it out for cinematic supremacy in the awards race ahead.

With the festival circuit already birthing strong contenders for Best Picture and acting (Anora, Emilia Pérez, and last year's TIFF award-winning Sing Sing), things are looking bright for the likes of director Sean Baker, actress Mikey Madison, the Pérez ensemble, and Colman Domingo, hot off his first-ever career Academy Award nod for Rustin.

Check out more from EW's The Awardist, featuring exclusive interviews, analysis, and our podcast diving into all the highlights from the year's best in TV, movies, and more.

All eyes are also on Angelina Jolie as she transforms body, soul, and voice (!) to become opera singer Maria Callas in Maria, a title that's (so far) leading the charge in an increasingly crowded Best Actress race that will surely heat up as the race progresses.

Until then, see EW's 2025 Oscar nominations predictions for the big six categories below — from Best Picture to all of the major acting brackets — updating throughout the awards season ahead.

The 2025 Oscars air Sunday, March 2 on ABC, beginning at 7 p.m. ET / 4 p.m. PT, with the official red carpet presentation beginning at 6:30 p.m. ET / 3:30 p.m. PT. Conan O'Brien is also set to host the ceremony for the first time in his career.

Best Picture

It's far too early to pinpoint exactly which films will rise to the top, but award-winning festival standouts such as Anora (the Cannes Palme d'Or winner), Edward Berger's Conclave, and Emilia Pérez (TIFF People's Choice runner-up) have already emerged as the cream of the crop so far. If there was any doubt about the increasing awards strength of these worldly cinema summits, let's look back one year to Justine Triet's Anatomy of a Fall, which also sustained from Cannes all the way through to the Oscars. Dune: Part Two also emerged from the first half of the year with a healthy box office fueling its run, which is only helped further by the awards success of the first Dune film in 2021. The other slots are far less certain at this stage, but The Brutalist and Sing Sing are all, on paper, surefire hits that will likely speak directly to Academy voters.

1. Anora
2. Conclave
3. The Brutalist
4. Emilia Pérez
5. Sing Sing
6. The Piano Lesson
7. Dune: Part Two
8. Wicked
9. Gladiator II
10. The Wild Robot

Other contenders: Queer; Nickel Boys; A Complete Unknown; The Room Next Door; A Real Pain

Best Director

Making a safe bet is always, naturally, a gamble when it comes to predicting the Best Director race. Most voters in this branch stay the course, aligning with the rest of the industry on a handful of filmmakers behind the year's most-praised pictures. There are typically one or two surprises in the category every year, as the branch continues inviting a more global voting base into its ranks. This often results in an international director squeezing past more well-known directors, and outside of the usual suspects behind marquee entries in the race this year, the genre-defying, visionary spectacle of Coralie Fargeat's The Substance (a popular title among prestige crowds at Cannes, mind you) could land her a spot in the category this year. Other than that, it's wise to predict the men responsible for the, well, safest bets.

1. Sean Baker, Anora
2. Jacques Audiard, Emilia Pérez
3. Brady Corbet, The Brutalist
4. Edward Berger, Conclave
5. Denis Villeneuve, Dune: Part Two
   

Other contenders: Jon M. Chu, Wicked; Coralie Fargeat, The Substance; Pedro Almodóvar, The Room Next Door; Steve McQueen, Blitz; Greg Kwedar, Sing Sing; RaMell Ross, Nickel Boys; Malcolm Washington, The Piano Lesson; Ridley Scott, Gladiator II

Best Actor

Actors? Playing real-life historical figures? Or — gasp — playing gay? You don't say! While there are a few contenders who fall into this category this year, the work leading men bring to the table is no less exciting. Hot off his nomination for Rustin, Domingo is eyeing up another strong bid for awards attention in Sing Sing, a project that actually debuted on the festival circuit last year, though goodwill for the film and its leading performance has carried it through to this year's competition. Other likely nominees hail from Best Picture contenders (Ralph Fiennes, Adrien Brody), and while Timothée Chalamet's transformation into Bob Dylan for James Mangold's A Complete Unknown feels right up the Academy's alley, its Dec. 25 release date feels too late for the film overall to make much of an impact on the race at large.

1. Ralph Fiennes, Conclave
2. Colman Domingo, Sing Sing
3. Adrien Brody, The Brutalist
4. Timothée Chalamet, A Complete Unknown
5. Daniel Craig, Queer;

Other contenders: John David Washington, The Piano Lesson; Andrew Garfield, We Live in Time; Sebastian Stan, The Apprentice; Paul Mescal, Gladiator II; Joaquin Phoenix, Joker: Folie à Deux; Jharrel Jerome, Unstoppable

Best Actress

While Pablo Larraín has directed three leading stars to Best Actress nominations for playing real-life cultural figures, his last effort, 2021's Spencer, barely crept over the threshold to score Kristen Stewart her first-ever acting nod. Angelina Jolie's turn as ill-fated opera singer Maria Callas in Maria has much larger backing behind it, with Netflix securing distribution rights to the title following its successful bow at the fall festivals. Jolie's superstar status also gives it a large dose of built-in star power, as she has two Oscars (one competitive, one honorary) already to her name. Mikey Madison's leading turn in Anora, however, occupies the other side of that coin, as the budding, rising star's central performance would mark her first nod at the top of a promising career. Honoring such ingenue status is an increasingly common thing in this category, which could also mark a historic nod for buzzy Emilia Pérez star Karla Sofia Gascón, who'd become the first trans woman to appear in this category if she's nominated. Other mainstays in well-received films include Saoirse Ronan in The Outrun, Tilda Swinton in The Room Next Door (both Antonio Banderas and Penélope Cruz have reaped nods for work in Pedro Almodóvar's recent titles), and Babygirl's Nicole Kidman, who won Best Actress in Venice.

1. Mikey Madison, Anora
2. Angelina Jolie, Maria
3. Nicole Kidman, Babygirl
4. Karla Sofia Gascón, Emilia Pérez
5. Saoirse Ronan, The Outrun

Other contenders: Tilda Swinton, The Room Next Door; Demi Moore,The Substance; Amy Adams, Nightbitch; Pamela Anderson, The Last Showgirl; Zendaya, Challengers; Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Hard Truths; June Squibb, Thelma

Best Supporting Actor

It's hard not to predict that the pattern of excellence ignited by Succession will continue as its stars navigate their post-series careers. Former colleagues on the HBO drama, Jeremy Strong and Kieran Culkin might've found themselves nominated in the same category this year for their supporting roles in The Apprentice and A Real Pain, respectively, though Strong's place in the race has significantly dwindled as the film's distributor, Briarcliff, couldn't push the film toward enough of a box office impact to make a dent in the Oscars race. There's a chance that the left-leaning Screen Actors Guild Awards could boost the project's prospects, and if it catches on there, there's no stopping Strong's wonderful performance as Roy Cohn, while support from the same group could also boost the supporting stars of Challengers into the race, so don't count out Mike Faist or Josh O'Connor for their work in a film that drove pop culture conversation — and internet chatter — earlier this year. Realistically, the safe bets at this stage are mostly in Best Picture contenders like The Brutalist (the long overdue Guy Pearce), Conclave (the beloved Stanley Tucci), and Anora (Yura Borisov is a relative unknown to many voters, but will go along for the ride here). Industry favorite Denzel Washington's star-powered, well-received turn in Gladiator II also feels like a sure thing for now, given initial reactions to the first major screening of the highly anticipated sequel to Ridley Scott's Oscar-winning original.

1. Guy Pearce, The Brutalist
2. Yura Borisov, Anora
3. Kieran Culkin, A Real Pain
4. Denzel Washington, Gladiator II
5. Clarence Maclin, Sing Sing
   

Other contenders: Stanley Tucci, Conclave; Samuel L. Jackson, The Piano Lesson; Josh O'Connor, Challengers; Mike Faist, Challengers; John Lithgow, Conclave; Edward Norton, A Complete Unknown; Jeremy Strong, The Apprentice

Best Supporting Actress

Danielle Deadwyler suffered one of the biggest snubs in recent Oscars history when she missed out on a nod for her work in 2022's Till. Now, all signs point to awards bodies course-correcting and finally giving her the recognition she deserved then for her equally deserving work in the upcoming August Wilson adaptation The Piano Lesson, an ensemble that's also building buzz for actors Samuel L. Jackson and John David Washington. Speaking of ensembles, if Emilia Pérez keeps building in the weeks ahead, Zoe Saldaña could be looking at her first nomination as well — especially after she shared Cannes' Best Actress prize with the aforementioned Gascón and fellow supporting actress Selena Gomez, who could very well end up with a nod here, too. Perennial nominee Saoirse Ronan is a safe choice at this point (could she be a double nominee?!), as is Felicity Jones for her supporting turn in the buzzy Brutalist. Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor's performance in Nickel Boys is creeping into pundits' list of expected contenders as well, but don't count out a peripheral contender like Jennifer Lopez, whose turn in Unstoppable hits all the right notes and comes wrapped in a crowd-pleasing, inspirational sports drama.

1. Danielle Deadwyler, The Piano Lesson
2. Zoe Saldaña, Emilia Pérez
3. Felicity Jones, The Brutalist
4. Ariana Grande, Wicked
5. Saoirse Ronan, Blitz;
   

Other contenders: Isabella Rossellini, Conclave; Selena Gomez, Emilia Pérez; Zendaya, Dune: Part Two; Natasha Lyonne, His Three Daughters; Jennifer Lopez, Unstoppable