'La Bola Negra,' 'Fjord' and 'The Invite'; bottom l-r: 'The Odyssey,' 'Project Hail Mary' and 'Wild Horse Nine' Carla Oset/Netflix/Courtesy Everett Collection; Neon; A24; Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal Pictures; Jonathan Olley/Amazon MGM Studios/Courtesy Everett Collection; Searchlight Pictures The time has come.
The 2026-2027 Oscar race is kicking off in earnest over the next month — today at the Venice Film Festival, Friday at the Telluride Film Festival, a week from tomorrow at the Toronto International Film Festival, and two weeks after that at the New York Film Festival — which means that it’s time for me, as The Hollywood Reporter’s executive editor of awards coverage, to share this season’s first installment of the Feinberg Forecast, my weekly assessment of the competition.
For anyone who doesn’t know or needs a reminder, my aim with the forecast is not to advocate for what I think should happen (who cares about that?), but to share what I think will happen (something at which I have a pretty solid track record going back 25 years). In order to formulate such an assessment, I attend a lot of screenings; monitor publicity, marketing and awards campaigns; constantly check-in with voters; and analyze relevant history and stats.
One thing that distinguishes this list of predictions from many other lists is that I do not rank films that I have not seen, because I think doing so is silly and unhelpful to anyone. In other words, if you want a spot on these charts, you have to earn it.
Before we get to the charts themselves, let’s level set.
A bunch of legitimate contenders have already been unveiled at film festivals — Sundance (e.g. Josephine), Berlin (e.g. Rose) and Cannes (e.g. Fjord, La Bola Negra, Fatherland, All of a Sudden, Paper Tiger, Minotaur, Coward, Gentle Monster) — and opened in commercial U.S. theaters (e.g. The Odyssey, Project Hail Mary, Toy Story 5, Michael, Obsession, Backrooms). A bunch more are about to premiere at one or more of the four top-tier fall fests (e.g. Musk, Being Heumann, Wild Horse Nine, Bunker, Tender Loving Care, Ink, The Liberation, Tenzing) or shortly thereafter (Sense and Sensibility, The Mosquito Bowl).
But there are still plenty of question marks. Will Peter Farrelly, whose Green Book came out of TIFF and went all the way to the best picture Oscar eight years ago, be able to retrace that path with the high-testing I Play Rocky, which will premiere at TIFF on Sept. 12? Will Alejandro González Iñarritu’s mysterious collaboration with Tom Cruise, DIGGER, which will be unveiled at a Royal Command screening in London on Sept. 22, prove to be a triumph, like Birdman, or a flop, like Bardo? Is Luca Guadagnino’s Sam Altman critique Artificial, which Neon picked up after Amazon/MGM dropped it and which NYFF will premiere on Oct. 5, merely provocative or actually good? Can two high-profile sequels, Aaron Sorkin’s The Social Reckoning and David Fincher’s The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth, overcome production challenges to become major players? And will Dune: Part Three, the final installment of Denis Villeneuve’s epic, and the totality of the trilogy’s accomplishment, be enough to pose a threat to the clear early frontrunner for best picture, The Odyssey? Only time will tell.
Screenshot In the meantime, one other thing to keep in mind: Most Academy members are not yet being invited — at least in the large numbers that they soon will be — to in-person screenings and events. But they are receiving notifications about films that have already been uploaded to their members-only streaming service, the Academy Screening Room, and my impression is that quite a few are checking those out. In years past, low-profile films that members were sent early on DVD screeners, such as Frozen River and A Better Life, wound up getting watched and ultimately nominated. So don’t underestimate the importance of capturing voters’ attention before they are inundated.
Anyway, without further ado, here are my rankings and commentary for all 24 Oscar categories…
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Best Picture
Image Credit: Universal Commentary The Odyssey has been massively successful both critically (it is at 94 percent on Rotten Tomatoes) and commercially (it has grossed $1.6 billion worldwide, #14 of all time). That being said, and contrary to some reporting, it did not play through the roof at its official Academy screening in LA — it was warmly but not effusively received, and its principal talent opted not to appear for a post-screening Q&A, which didn’t help matters. But it certainly has been seen and liked by more Academy members around the world than any other film, many of whom do love it, so it is indeed the clear frontrunner.
Other top-tier contenders include Project Hail Mary, which was also a giant critical and commercial success, and probably benefits from being a little more light-hearted than most of its competition; two Cannes darlings, La Bola Negra, a sweeping Spanish-language epic which is Netflix’s principal cause this awards season, and Fjord; and The Invite, a Sundance darling that went on to very strong reviews and box office for a film of its size.
The title that is likeliest to pop out of the fall fests may well be Wild Horse Nine; it’s very quirky, but so too were Martin McDonagh’s earlier films Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and The Banshees of Inisherin, which were widely embraced by the Academy.
Can another true blockbuster join The Odyssey and Project Hail Mary in the 10? Keep an eye on Toy Story 5, Michael and Obsession — I’m sure the Academy and its broadcasting partner, ABC, will!
Frontrunners 1. The Odyssey (Universal, July 17, THR review) — Christopher Nolan & Emma Thomas 2. Project Hail Mary (Amazon/MGM, March 20, THR review) — Ryan Gosling, Phil Lord, Chris Miller, Rachel O’Connor, Amy Pascal, Aditya Sood & Andy Weir 3. Wild Horse Nine (Searchlight, Nov. 6) — Graham Broadbent, Pete Czernin, Martin McDonagh & Anita Overland VENI 4. La Bola Negra (Netflix, Oct. 16, THR review) — Javier Ambrossi & Javier Calvo CANN, TIFF 5. Fjord (Neon, Oct. 9, THR review) — Dyveke Bkørkly Graver, Cristian Mungiu, Andrea Berentsen Ottmar & Tudor Reu CANN, KARL, TIFF 6. The Invite (A24, June 26, THR review) — Ben Browning, Megan Ellison & David Permut SUND 7. Tender Loving Care (Bleecker Street, Dec. 4) — Georgina Lowe TIFF, NYFF 8. Ink (Netflix, Dec. 11) — Danny Boyle, Michael Ellenberg, Tessa Ross & Tracey Seaward VENI, TIFF 9. Paper Tiger (Neon, Nov. 13, THR review) — Andrea Bucko, Gary Farkas, Anthony Katagas, Raffaella Leone, Marco Perego, Carlo Salem & Rodrigo Teixeira CANN, KARL, NYFF 10. Toy Story 5 (Disney/Pixar, June 19, THR review) — Jessica Choi & Lindsey Collins
Major Threats 11. Michael (Lionsgate, 4/24, THR review) — John Branca, Graham King & John McClain 12. Fatherland (MUBI, Oct. 23, THR review) — Edward Berger, Lorenzo Gangarossa, Mario Gianani, Lorenzo Mieli, Ewa Puszczyńska, Dimitri Rassam & Jeanne Tremsal CANN, KARL, NYFF 13. All of a Sudden (Neon, Nov. 25, THR review) — Renan Artukmaç, Bettina Brokemper, Julien Deris, David Gauquié, Hiroko Matsuda, Jean-Luc Ormières, Kôsuke Oshida, Joseph Rouschop & Yûji Sadai CANN, TIFF, NYFF 14. Minotaur (MUBI, Nov. 20, THR review) — Charles Gillibert & Andrei Zvyagintsev CANN, TIFF, NYFF 15. Obsession (Focus, May 15, THR review) — James Harris, Haley Nicole Johnson, Christian Mercuri & Roman Viaris-de-Lesegno TIFF 16. Tuner (Black Bear, 5/22, THR review) — Michael Heimler, Teddy Schwarzman, JoAnne Sellar & Lila Yacoub TIFF, SUND
Possibilities 17. Sense and Sensibility (Focus, Oct. 16) — Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, India Flint & Jo Wallet 18. Josephine (Sumerian, Nov. 20, THR review) — Jesse Hope, Josh Peters & Max Walker-Silverman SUND, BERL 19. The Mosquito Bowl (Netflix, Oct. 30) — Peter Berg, Alex Gayner & Brian Grazer 20. Coward (MUBI, Dec. 25, THR review) — Michiel Dhont CANN, KARL 21. Being Heumann (Apple, Nov. 6) — John W. Beach, Kevin Cleary, Sian Heder, David Permut & Kevin Walsh TIFF 22. Tony (A24, Aug. 7, THR review) — Matt Johnson, Matthew Miller, Tim White & Trevor White
Long Shots 23. Backrooms (A24, May 29, THR review) — Kori Adelson, Peter Chernin, Michael Clear, Dan Cohen, Chris Ferguson, Dan Levine, Shawn Levy, Roberto Patino, Osgood Perkins, Jenno Topping & James Wan 24. The Liberation (Bleecker Street, TBD) — Julia Lebedev, Roy Lee, Oren Moverman, Jaime Ray Newman, Steven Schneider & Eddie Vaisman TIFF 25. Bunker (Sony Classics, TBD) — Fernando Bovaira, Alice Dawson, Federica Sainte-Rose & Simón de Santiago VENI, TIFF 26. Tenzing (Apple, Oct. 9) — Desray Armston, Iain Canning, Luke Davies, Jennifer Peedom, Emile Sherman & Liz Watts 27. Disclosure Day (Universal, June 12, THR review) — Kristie Macosko Krieger & Steven Spielberg
Still to See or Under Embargo Artificial (Neon, TBD) — Jeffrey Clifford, Jennifer Fox, Luca Guadagnino, David Heyman & Simon Rich Behemoth! (Searchlight, Dec. 4) — John Gilroy, Tony Gilroy & Sanne Wohlenberg NYFF Club Kid (A24, Nov. 6, THR review) — Alex Coco, Galen Core & Ryan Heller CANN The Debut (A24, Dec. 11) — Jesse Eisenberg, Ali Herting, Dave McNary & Emma Stone TIFF, NYFF DIGGER (Warner Bros., Oct. 2) — Tom Cruise, Alejandro González Iñarritu & Mary Parent Dune: Part Three (Warner Bros., Dec. 18) — Cale Boyter, Tanya Lapointe, Patrick McCormick, Mary Parent & Denis Villeneuve Elsinore (Focus, Nov. 20) — Carolyn Marks Blackwood, Mickey Liddell, Stefano Massenzi, Andrea Occhipinti, Andrew Scott, Pete Shilaimon & Gabrielle Tana TIFF, LOND The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth (Netflix, Nov. 25) — Ceán Chaffin, David Heyman, Brad Pitt & Quentin Tarantino Heart of the Beast (Paramount, Sept. 25) — David Ayer, Marty Bowen, Olivia Hamilton & Brad Pitt I Play Rocky (Amazon/MGM, Nov. 13) — Christian Baha, Toby Emmerich & Peter Farrelly TIFF Madden (Amazon/MGM, Nov. 26) — Todd Black, Jason Blumenthal, Matthew Budman, Jonathan Shukat & Steve Tisch Mr. Irrelevant (Paramount, Dec. 25) — Gillian Bohrer, David Ellison, Dana Goldberg, Don Granger, Jonathan Levine & Nick Santora Possible Love (Netflix, Oct. 23) — Lee Joon-dong, David Levine & Chadwick Prichard Primetime (A24, Sept. 25) — Ari Aster, Fred Berger, Tyler Campellone, Brian Kavanaugh-Jones, Lars Knudsen, Brighton McCloskey & Robert Pattinson VENI The Social Reckoning (Sony, Oct. 9) — Stuart M. Besser, Todd Black, Peter Rice & Aaron Sorkin Werwulf (Focus, Dec. 25) — Tim Bevan, Garrett Bird, Robert Eggers, Eric Fellner & Sjón Sigurdsson
