By Every year in the days before the Oscars air, several publications speak with unidentified members from the Academy to discuss their votes and what films are likely to fare well (or badly) at the upcoming ceremony.
It’s happened again this year and has revealed some interesting thoughts. EW spoke with four people from different branches and some commonalities emerged.
First up, there’s not a whole lot of love for any films in the Best Picture line-up, with quite a few unseen and of those seen they seem to pick ones by default as opposed to passionately liking their choice. “Wicked” and “Conclave” seem to emerge as potential winners here.
Critics favorites like “Anora” and “The Brutalist” didn’t fare well, none of the four had seen “Dune: Part Two” with at least two saying they didn’t bother after disliking Villeneuve’s first one. “Nickel Boys” also wasn’t seen by at least two of them.
All four had a different choice for director and for international film, but the acting choices were pretty clear with Demi Moore, Timothée Chalamet, Kieran Culkin, and Zoe Saldaña all getting strong support.
Variety ran a similar piece but with a much larger pool of 84 individual AMPAS members. In their polls, “The Brutalist” has some fans who’ve put it on top, but those who don’t like it really don’t like it and rank it low – that may hurt it with the Oscars’ preferential voting system. They suggest “Anora” or “Conclave” remain the safest bets for Best Picture.
One surprise is that two separate voters didn’t vote for Ralph Fiennes saying he “won before” for “Schindler’s List”. He didn’t win that award, Tommy Lee Jones won that year for “The Fugitive”, and has not scored an Oscar as yet.
There are even less frontrunners overall in these polls, and it suggests things could still be anyone’s game come Sunday night.
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