Nominations voting is from January 8-12, 2025, with official Oscar nominations announced January 17, 2025. Final voting is February 11-18, 2025. And finally, the 97th Oscars telecast will be broadcast on Sunday, March 2 and air live on ABC at 7:00 p.m. ET/ 4:00 p.m. PT. We update our picks through awards season, so keep checking IndieWire for all our 2025 Oscar predictions.
The State of the Race
Sequels have been a dominant part of the Best Adapted Screenplay conversation the past couple years, and though those productions show no signs of stopping, we have finally leveled out this year, with only two or three sequels that are seriously in the screenplay awards conversation serving as follow-ups to scripts that have already been nominated for the Oscar.
Though there is a lot of trickiness around how to campaign “Dune: Part Two,” being that voters do not often flock toward the second film in a proposed trilogy, the March blockbuster has a strong case to be made here. Filmmaker Denis Villeneuve and co-writer Jon Spaihts do actually get the finality those Academy members are looking for, as the film only adapts the back half of Frank Herbert’s initial novel. Other adaptations have their fans, but the current series starring Timothée Chalamet is becoming the definitive film version of the sci-fi epic, still taking tasteful liberties. The film is also now Warner Bros.’ best shot at awards, and there may not be another film year where “Dune” has even more of a chance, so if they play their cards right, Best Adapted Screenplay could go their way.
Especially since “Emilia Pérez,” which is arguably the biggest Best Picture contender of this bunch, is a musical, and for the past couple decades, that has been a genre that has seen almost no love in the screenplay races, especially if the film is an adaptation. Only “A Star Is Born” and “Chicago” serve as relatively recent examples. But the film feels so fresh that it is hard to say it does not have a shot here, against all odds. To look at it through another lens, the film is considered an adaptation because it’s based on Jacques Audiard’s own opera libretto of the same name, and writers who adapt themselves have a pretty good track record in Best Adapted Screenplay, whether it be Florian Zeller winning for “The Father” alongside co-writer Christopher Hampton, or playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney winning for “Moonlight” alongside director Barry Jenkins.
Though some may have hang-ups with the visual storytelling of “Nickel Boys,” the script from director RaMell Ross and co-writer Joslyn Barnes is an undeniable awards contender as it really attempts a refreshingly unique take on Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, and that kind of pedigree is often hard for any film adaptation to live up to.
Most of the late-in-the-year releases Like “Wicked,” “Gladiator II,” “A Complete Unknown,” and “Nosferatu” are all adaptations, so this Oscar race could look very different in January, but the last titles that have really caught fire are “Conclave,” which just hit the exact right notes for a fun twisty allegory, and “Sing Sing,” which has just been a deeply touching film for many over the year since it premiered at TIFF.
Potential nominees are listed in alphabetical order; no film will be deemed a frontrunner until we have seen it.
Frontrunners:
Jacques Audiard (“Emilia Pérez”)
Joslyn Barnes and RaMell Ross (“Nickel Boys”)
Clint Bentley, Greg Kwedar, Clarence “Divine Eye” Maclin, and John “Divine G” Whitfield (“Sing Sing”)
Jon Spaihts and Denis Villeneuve (“Dune: Part Two”)
Peter Straughan (“Conclave”)
Contenders:
Pedro Almodóvar (“The Room Next Door”)
Peter Brown and Chris Sanders (“The Wild Robot”)
Jay Cocks and James Mangold (“A Complete Unknown”)
Dana Fox and Winnie Holzman (“Wicked”)
Marielle Heller and Rachel Yoder (“Nightbitch”)
Dave Holstein, Meg LeFauve, and Kelsey Mann (“Inside Out 2”)
Justin Kuritzkes (“Queer”)
Richard Linklater and Glen Powell (“Hit Man”)
David Scarpa (“Gladiator II”)
Malcolm Washington, Virgil Williams, and August Wilson (“The Piano Lesson”)
Long Shots:
Zach Baylin (“The Order”)
Robert Eggers (“Nosferatu”)
Barry Jenkins (“The Fire Inside”)
Eric Champnella, Alex Harris, and John Hindman (“Unstoppable”)
Nora Fingscheidt, Daisy Lewis, and Amy Liptrot (“The Outrun”)
Murilo Hauser and Heitor Lorega (“I’m Still Here”)
Shawn Levy, Rhett Reese, Ryan Reynolds, Zeb Wells, and Paul Wernick (“Deadpool and Wolverine”)
Jeff Nichols (“The Bikeriders”)
Eric Roth and Robert Zemeckis (“Here”)
Paul Schrader (“Oh, Canada”)