we’re gonna need a bigger vote

One of this year’s Best Picture frontrunners has suffered a blow in the Oscar race. 

The nominees for the British Academy Film Awards were unveiled Thursday, and Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans had a surprisingly poor showing despite being considered one of the top contenders to win the Best Picture Oscar.

The film earned just one BAFTA nomination, for Original Screenplay, but was left out of the categories of Best Film and Best Director. Spielberg, in fact, didn’t even make the BAFTAs’ longlist of 16 possible director nominees. Every member of the movie’s cast, including Michelle Williams, also failed to earn a nomination. 

It was a reversal of fortune for The Fabelmans after the film recently had a great night at the Golden Globe Awards, winning the top prize of Best Motion Picture – Drama. So its weak performance at the BAFTAs made for a “pretty remarkable transatlantic demotion,” Deadline noted. 

This doesn’t mean The Fabelmans is on track to miss major nominations at the Oscars, and the British Academy has seemed less enthusiastic about Spielberg than the Academy Awards in recent years. His films The Post and West Side Story were both not nominated at the BAFTAs, but still earned Best Picture Oscar nominations. “The Fabelmans will do better at Oscars,” argued IndieWire editor Anne Thompson. 

But The Fabelmans‘ chances of winning Best Picture may have taken a hit considering every Best Picture Oscar winner in the past decade was nominated for Best Film at the BAFTAs with the exception of CODA last year. But that omission made sense given the surge in momentum that carried CODA to its Best Picture win didn’t happen until after the BAFTA nominations were announced. 

On the flip side, The Fabelmans‘ two main competitors for Best Picture, Everything Everywhere All at Once and The Banshees of Inisherin, earned 10 BAFTA nominations each. But the nomination leader was actually All Quiet on the Western Front, leaving Netflix’s war film well-positioned for a Best Picture nod when the Oscar nominations are announced on Jan. 24.