The biggest pop culture event of the year is upon us. The 2024 Oscars ceremony is this weekend, and everyone is asking one question: Who is going to win? An endless parade of precursor awards like the Golden Globes, the Critics Choice Awards, and the SAG Awards, have given some clues to potential victors, but no one really knows for sure who is going to win Best Picture, Best Actress, and the other 21 categories.
Will the two movies that made up last summer’s Barbenheimer phenomenon, Oppenheimer and Barbie, emerge triumphant? Or will underdogs like The Holdovers or Poor Things impress enough voters to secure surprise wins? Digital Trends will look into a crystal ball and give our best guess as to who will win, who will go home empty-handed, and who might pull off an upset.
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Who is going to win? Oppenheimer. When the nominations were announced, it was a two-way horse race between it and Barbie, but the latter movie has since faded. Besides, Oppenheimer is the rare movie that’s a financial blockbuster, a cultural phenomenon, and a critical darling. Films like that rare, and the Academy will want to enshrine it in its hall of fame.
Paul Giamatti – The Holdovers
Jeffrey Wright – American Fiction
Who is going to win? Cillian Murphy. It’s tempting to pick Giamatti here, and in most years, he’s be a slam dunk, but Murphy has the Oppenheimer train supporting him, and he won both the Golden Globe and the SAG award for Best Actor.
Lily Gladstone – Killers of the Flower Moon
Sandra Hüller – Anatomy of a Fall
Who is going to win? This is the only major category that’s still a bit of an enigma, but I’m leaning toward Lily Gladstone due to her win at the SAG Awards last month. A lot of people are banking on Emma Stone as a potential spoiler, but my money is on Sandra Hüller. Anatomy of a Fall has tons of momentum right now, and her big fight scene (“You are not a victim!”) has made the rounds on social media.
Danielle Brooks – The Color Purple
Da’Vine Joy Randolph – The Holdovers
Who is going to win? Da’Vine Joy Randolph. She’s won every major precursor award. Plus, she actually deserves it.
Sterling K. Brown – American Fiction
Robert De Niro – Killers of the Flower Moon
Robert Downey Jr. – Oppenheimer
Who is going to win? Robert Downey Jr. A past nominee for Chaplin and Tropic Thunder, the ex-Iron Man is due for his Oscar, and it won’t be for Doctor Dolittle 2.
Anatomy of a Fall – Justine Triet
Killers of the Flower Moon – Martin Scorsese
Oppenheimer – Christopher Nolan
Poor Things – Yorgos Lanthimos
The Zone of Interest – Jonathan Glazer
Who is going to win? Christopher Nolan. It’s time to honor the only director who can bring in a crowd for a three-hour movie about nuclear physics.
Who is going to win? It’s a toss-up between American Fiction and Barbie, but I’m leaning toward American Fiction.
Who is going to win? It’s between Anatomy of a Fall or Past Lives. The former has more momentum, so I’m going with Anatomy of a Fall.
The Fire Inside – Flamin’ Hot (Diane Warren)
I’m Just Ken – Barbie (Mark Ronson, Andrew Wyatt)
It Never Went Away – American Symphony (Jon Batiste, Dan Wilson)
Wahzhazhe (A Song For My People) – Killers of the Flower Moon (Scott George)
What Was I Made For? – Barbie (Billie Eilish, Finneas O’Connell)
Who is going to win? Billie and Barbie have this locked down.
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
Who is going to win? Ludwig Göransson‘s lush, forceful score for Oppenheimer is the most memorable, and the one to beat.
Who is going to win? If a nominee in this category is also a Best Picture nominee as well, it stands an excellent chance of winning: The Zone of Interest.
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
Who is going to win? This is tough call between Sony’s critically acclaimed Miles Morales sequel and Hayao Miyazaki’s not-so-final film. I want The Boy and the Heron to win this, but I think it will go to Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.
Who is going to win? Poor Things. The costumes are the showiest, so it will edge out its main competition, Barbie.
Who is going to win? Maestro has the much-talked about nose, so it will probably win here.
Who is going to win? Barbie‘s Dream House should edge out Poor Things‘ steampunk cityscapes, but don’t be surprised if it doesn’t.
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One
Who is going to win? It makes sense that Oppenheimer wins here, but don’t count out Johnnie Burn’s extraordinary work on The Zone of Interest.
Who is going to win? The conventional wisdom is that the Best Picture winner also snags Best Editing unless there’s an action movie in the mix. There aren’t any this year, so this award belongs to Oppenheimer.
Who is going to win? Killers of the Flower Moon has the visuals that usually win in this category, but Oppenheimer cannot be denied.
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One
Who is going to win? The sentimental favorite here is Godzilla Minus One, which managed to pulled off its impressive special effects with a budget of less than $20 million. But I wouldn’t be surprised if The Creator wins instead.
The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar
Who is going to win? Oscar has a chance to honor Wes Anderson with The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, so they will probably pick that one.
War Is Over! Inspired by the Music of John & Yoko
Who is going to win? Oscar tends to like shorts that have the Holocaust as its main subject, so Letter to a Pig it is.
Bobi Wine: The People’s President
Who is going to win? Ukraine’s 20 Days in Mariupol.
Who is going to win? The ABCs of Book Banning although Nǎi Nai and Wài Pó could surprise due to its availability on Disney+.
China just gave Hollywood a cautionary tale about AI filmmaking. Sanxingdui: Future Past, billed as the country's first fully AI-generated movie, hit theaters on October 23 and bombed at the box office.
According to Futurism, the film's reported $1.5 million production budget landed on more than 10,000 screens. Yet it pulled in only about $181,000, averaging roughly $20 per screen, making the budget difficult to recover.
Some of the best shots in Grok Imagine’s AI-made Odyssey don’t contain actors. Ancient landscapes stretch into the distance. Close-ups of grimy hands suggest people who have touched something rougher than a keyboard. For a few seconds, the illusion holds.
https://twitter.com/imagine/status/2113712964419063911
YouTube videos could soon look better without eating quite so much data, right? Thankfully, the platform plans to introduce a new video format called AV2 on its web player in early 2027, promising more efficient streaming and potentially fewer playback hiccups on slower internet connections. The big headline is a roughly 30% improvement in compression efficiency over AV1, YouTube's existing video format. That doesn't guarantee every video will use 30% less data, but it could make streaming a little easier on both internet connections and data allowances.
What is AV2, and why should viewers care?