Best Picture expert slugfest: ‘Emilia Pérez’ is the ‘undeniable’ Oscar winner at this stage because of its 13 nominations
Ten movies made the cut for Best Picture at the 2025 Oscars: Anora, The Brutalist, A Complete Unknown, Conclave, Dune: Part Two, Emilia Pérez, I’m Still Here, Nickel Boys, The Substance, and Wicked. But which one will be named the winner when the final envelope is opened on March 2?
After the nominations were announced, five top Oscar experts from major media outlets wrapped up their first session of winner predictions for Best Picture: Gold Derby’s Debra Birnbaum, Deadline’s Pete Hammond, Variety‘s Clayton Davis, The Hollywood Reporter‘s Scott Feinberg, and Indiewire’s Anne Thompson. Watch their Oscars slugfest video above.
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“Following nominations, you have to say Emilia Pérez [is the winner, because of its] 13 nominations on paper,” Davis proclaims. However, he concedes that “six movies can win Best Picture … they have their own individual pathway,” referring to Anora, The Brutalist, Conclave, Wicked, A Complete Unknown, and Emilia Pérez. “You could tell me they won at the end and I’d believe you.”
“It’s hard to say anything other than Emilia Pérez right now,” Feinberg says. “It doesn’t mean it’s a pick we can all be very confident in, but when you’ve got 13 nominations, literally only three movies have ever had more than that, and that was just one more [nomination]. And two of those won. It’s just a formidable figure, especially in the era of the preferential ballot.” The historical films with 14 bids are All About Eve (1950) and Titanic (1997), both of which won Best Picture, and La La Land (2016), which lost to Moonlight.
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When it comes to predicting the Best Picture winner, Thompson chuckles, “I keep changing my mind! Before the nominations, it was definitely The Brutalist. I think Brady Corbet wins director and Adrien Brody wins actor. But it’s still an art film. It’s still something very special and long. It’s accessible, but it’s also alienating for some people. It’s serious, it has gravitas, it has that look and feel of a big Oscar movie.”
Hammond suspects that Emilia Pérez will be the “undeniable” winner because of its 13 nominations, though he reminds viewers, “Two of them are for songs, and one of them is for international film.” Eliminating those three would put it on “an even keel” with Wicked, but that blockbuster movie missed directing and writing, and “the last time a movie won like that was 1932’s Grand Hotel. So what are you gonna do?”
Adds Birnbaum, “Don’t count out the Brazilians,” referring to the voting contingent that might pick their homegrown film I’m Still Here. “The moral of the story is, we don’t know, and the preferential ballot has never mattered more,” she concludes.
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