Tuesday, February 8, will bring one of the most thrilling and nerve-jangling annual events in Hollywood: the Oscar nominations. Making our Oscar nominations predictions for 2022, after a season upended by omicron and box office disappointments, was a little harder than usual—but what are we here for if not to try? Below, the Awards Insider team offers their final predictions in 20 major categories (apologies to the shorts), from best picture to visual effects. Did you get it right? Come back to Awards Insider on February 8 to find out.
BEST PICTURE
Belfast
CODA
Don’t Look Up
Dune
King Richard
Licorice Pizza
Nightmare Alley
The Power of the Dog
Tick, Tick…Boom!
West Side Story
Unlike the past few years, we know one thing about this year’s best-picture category: There will be 10 films nominated. You would think that the Academy’s new rule would bring more stability to this race, but it has actually muddied the waters when it comes to what could possibly land in the last couple spots. The sure things at this point are the two front-runners—Belfast and The Power of the Dog—which have been leading the conversation all season and have picked up every award they’ve needed to. Dune and Licorice Pizza impressively landed WGA, DGA, and PGA nominations, which cements their positions on this list as well. Don’t Look Up, King Richard, and West Side Story both hit the PGA and WGA lists and feel solid here as well. The final four slots have more of a chance of leading to a surprise. CODA didn’t have much momentum early in the season but has come back with a strong push in recent weeks on critics list and SAG nominations along with PGA and WGA. Adam McKay’s Don't Look Up may be polarizing but it should follow in the footsteps of his precious film Vice and land on the best-picture list. We wouldn’t have thought Tick, Tick…Boom! would make this list because for weeks it had seemed that only lead Andrew Garfield was due for any nominations, but after making the PGA and WGA lists, we think this film is earning favor with many different sections of the Academyand should slip in here as well. The final spot is a toss-up between Being the Ricardos, Nightmare Alley, and maybe a surprise inclusion of Drive My Car. Other than Nicole Kidman’s expected lock for best actress, Being the Ricardos has been met with a tepid response from many in the industry, even though it landed on the PGA 10. Drive My Car, on the other hand, is beloved by the industry and critics alike, but as a three-hour foreign-language film it does not have the easiest journey to a nomination. Of course, Parasite and Roma are recent examples of foreign-language films that have made it in, but their directors were more familiar to the Academy. Still, as the voting body grows more international, we wouldn’t be surprised if Drive My Car pulled this off. But our money is on Nightmare Alley, brought to us by previous best-picture Oscar winner Guillermo del Toro. Not only does it have an all-star ensemble, but it’s a crafts dream, and we’ve seen before (with the likes of The Shape of Water) that being respected by the BTL groups can boost a film into the best-picture category when it’s on the fence. —Rebecca Ford
BEST DIRECTOR
Paul Thomas Anderson, Licorice Pizza
Kenneth Branagh, Belfast
Jane Campion, The Power of the Dog
Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, Drive My Car
Denis Villeneuve, Dune
It’s generally sacrilegious for pundits to predict that all five of the DGA nominees will go onto the Oscars. The DGA tends to select at least one overall best-picture heavyweight that’s more script-driven—Tom McCarthy for Spotlight, or last year’s Aaron Sorkin for The Trial of the Chicago 7—only for it to get replaced at the Oscars with an artier, more singular vision. Yet no 2022 guild nominee seems directors’-branch-unfriendly; each is uniquely positioned to click with those voters: Jane Campion’s epic spin on the Western, Paul Thomas Anderson’s luscious love letter to ’70s L.A., Kenneth Branagh’s black-and-white cinematic memoir, Denis Villeneuve’s sci-fi spectacle, Steven Spielberg’s ingenious update on a classic. All are former nominees here, back in contention with career-best reviews. But it’s possible that Anderson’s Licorice Pizza is a little too comic and free-flowing for the branch, or, as I am predicting, that West Side Story didn’t quite land with the industry as we thought, for whatever reason (guilds and BAFTA have told the tale here). Maybe voters turn to another past nominee like Guillermo del Toro or Adam McKay instead, but this category actually has an incredibly strong track record of recognizing a first-time nominee. The obvious surging candidate is Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, whose astounding control of Drive My Car has found plenty of fans in this crucial last month of campaigning. BAFTA embraced him, as have key critics groups, and since international contenders often outperform with this group, the recipe is there for him to make a deserved, surprise entrance here. —David Canfield
BEST ACTOR
Benedict Cumberbatch, The Power of the Dog
Peter Dinklage, Cyrano
Andrew Garfield, Tick, Tick…Boom!
Will Smith, King Richard
Denzel Washington, The Tragedy of Macbeth
For more than five months now this category has been seemingly dominated by Will Smith, whose intensely charismatic performance in King Richard seemed to strike a perfect balance of movie-star dazzle and transformative character work. Smith still feels like the front-runner here, with two British actors in Netflix projects, Cumberbatch and Garfield, in lockstep right behind him. Apple and A24’s The Tragedy of Macbeth, curiously quiet for much of the season, has made a major campaign push in the final weeks of voting, and Washington’s undeniable performance as the Thane of Cawdor should get recognition even for a movie that’s not especially accessible. In the fifth slot, while SAG went for Being the Ricardos star Javier Bardem, we’re taking a flyer on Dinklage. Cyrano is only now making its big release push, and Dinklage’s passionate performance should be a heartstring-tugger even for people who aren’t in sync with the movie as a whole. In a category that has in recent years featured shockers like Willem Dafoe for At Eternity’s Gate and Washington himself for Roman J. Israel, Esq., Dinklage could certainly be the latest in that line. —Katey Rich
BEST ACTRESS
Olivia Colman, The Lost Daughter
Penélope Cruz, Parallel Mothers
Lady Gaga, House of Gucci
Nicole Kidman, Being the Ricardos
Kristen Stewart, Spencer
