The Oscars Are Trying to Be Relevant Again

This morning’s Oscar nominations capped a year marked by a stunning run of critical and commercial success for one of Hollywood’s biggest—and most discussed—studios. Warner Bros. dominated proceedings with big hauls for One Battle After Another and Sinners. The latter, a vampire story set in 1930s Mississippi, made Academy history by becoming the most nominated film of all time: It earned 16 nods, two higher than the previous record holders, Titanic, La La Land, and All About Eve. The Academy Awards are commonly defined these days by a struggle for relevance, making the fact that such high-quality, non-franchise movies from a major studio connected with audiences a considerable boon—especially after last year’s show, which celebrated a swath of more inscrutable indie pictures.

That success still came with familiar existential baggage for the film industry. Warner Bros., while making creative bets that paid off, has been embroiled in high-stakes merger drama for several months. Netflix and Paramount have both vied to purchase the studio, which in either case would create a corporate behemoth likely less inclined to take the risks that lead to a One Battle, or a Sinners, or even a Weapons (which nabbed a Best Supporting Actress nod for Amy Madigan, who played the antagonist). No matter what the future holds, though, the Warner Bros. triumph can’t be undermined: It helped define 2025 as a year in which movies coaxed adult audiences to theaters by blending action and spectacle with more challenging, trenchant storytelling.

Other big nomination-getters included Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet, an adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s novel that especially drew plaudits for its emotionally demanding performances. (Jessie Buckley, who plays a grief-stricken mother, has been the presumed front-runner for Best Actress since awards season began.) A24’s gamble on a big-budget table-tennis epic paid off, with Marty Supreme earning nine nominations; not only has the film become the indie studio’s highest-grossing release ever, but its star, Timothée Chalamet, is also tipped for Best Actor. Meanwhile, Apple’s hit sports drama F1, which collected four nods, including Best Picture, is the closest thing to a typical blockbuster contender. Two box-office smashes that once seemed like guarantees, meanwhile, are absent from Best Picture, namely Avatar: Fire and Ash and Wicked: For Good; the sequel to last year’s Oscar-winning Wicked blanked entirely this year. Handing out nominations to a film headed up by a big name like Brad Pitt—as well as several of his movie-star peers, such as One Battle After Another’s lead, Leonardo DiCaprio; Michael B. Jordan, who plays two roles in Sinners; and Emma Stone, for Yorgos Lanthimos’s acidic satire Bugonia—guarantees a glitzier show, which is vital to the point of the Oscars: The ceremony is essentially an advertisement for the act of theatergoing.

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In recent years, the Academy Awards have been shaped by the more international and art-house tilt of the nominations. This run began with Parasite’s Best Picture win in 2020, and perhaps peaked last year with a slew of less commercial nominees. The controversial French musical Emilia Pérez led the field; the indie dramas Anora and The Brutalist picked up several major nods, as did the gory horror satire The Substance; Anora took Best Picture. Meanwhile, bigger franchise hits such as Wicked and Dune: Part Two were relegated to wins in the technical categories. In decades past, winning the Cannes Film Festival’s top prize, the coveted Palme D’or, was of little relevance to later awards success. But of late, it’s been a vital indicator: Anora and Parasite used it as a springboard to Oscar glory, and fellow Palme d’Or victors such as Triangle of Sadness and Anatomy of a Fall ended up with awards-season success.

With that track record in mind, the indie powerhouse Neon snapped up every big Cannes winner that it could, including this year’s Palme winner, It Was Just an Accident; the Brazilian period drama The Secret Agent; the nail-biting thriller Sirāt, a co-production from France and Spain; and the director Joachim Trier’s Norwegian family dramedy, Sentimental Value, his follow-up to the well-regarded The Worst Person in the World. Some pundits wondered whether Neon had gone overboard with its awards slate, but all four movies were recognized in the International Feature Film category and elsewhere; The Secret Agent and Sentimental Value also made it to Best Picture. Sentimental Value was particularly beloved, earning nine nominations, while Wagner Moura’s Best Actor nod for The Secret Agent makes him the first Brazilian ever recognized in that category.

There were a few other surprises, particularly in the acting categories. Among the nominees for Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress were two Sinners stars, Wunmi Mosaku and Delroy Lindo—the latter a Hollywood veteran finally getting his first nod. Kate Hudson sneaked into the Best Actress category for Song Sung Blue, an inspirational true-story musical drama; the One Battle After Another ingénue, Chase Infiniti, meanwhile, was locked out. Hamnet, which won Best Motion Picture—Drama at the Golden Globes earlier this month, slightly under-indexed; Paul Mescal missed out on Supporting Actor despite noms at several other awards ceremonies this year. The film also missed out on key technical nods, such as Cinematography and Editing. And in the Best Picture lineup, Netflix’s meditative drama Train Dreams earned a spot, whereas two of the streamer’s splashier movies—the George Clooney–starring Jay Kelly and the latest Knives Out sequel, Wake Up Dead Man—didn’t make the cut.

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Now the nearly two-month trudge to the ceremony itself begins. Although there’s likely to be the usual hand-wringing in the press about plateauing viewership, the Oscars’ long-term future has already been secured: YouTube will own the broadcast rights starting in 2029. That deal will keep funding the show, guarantee a wider audience, and banish any larger concerns about Nielsen ratings as the traditional broadcast model continues to go extinct.

This year’s awards narrative was already feeling especially ossified. One Battle After Another has been the front-runner since sweeping the critics’ prizes and winning four Golden Globes, including for Best Motion Picture—Musical or Comedy. Sinners’ huge nomination haul, however, will throw it back into the mix as One Battle’s biggest potential rival—rewarding Warner Bros.’s year of risk-taking mightily, regardless of what happens.