2023 Oscars predictions: Brendan Fraser, Viola Davis, Avatar , and more contenders to watch
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Love for CODA continues to crescendo after its historic Best Picture victory at the 94th Academy Awards, but echoes from healthy Sundance and Cannes slates — and whispers of high-profile projects from Hollywood heavyweights making headway at Telluride, Venice, and TIFF ahead — have already piqued industry interest.
Ilze Kitshoff/TriStar Pictures; A24; 20th Century Studios
Read on for some (super early) potential contenders to keep an eye on in the 2023 Oscars race.
<i>Armageddon Time</i>
With heavyweights (Anne Hathaway, Jeremy Strong) on heavyweights (Anthony Hopkins) populating James Gray's big-screen return, the film should be a showcase for finessed acting. After reaching for the outer layers of the universe on the bizarre sci-fi drama Ad Astra in 2019, Gray comes back to Earth with a coming-of-age tale set in the 1980s, suggesting a return to the more poignant dramatic material (The Immigrant, Two Lovers) he's known for. Add the Academy's penchant for men writing about the origins of… well… men (Licorice Pizza, Belfast, etc.) and we predict an awards season apocalypse for any contender that stands in Armageddon's way.
<i>Avatar: The Way of Water</i>
There's a bit of liquid courage bolstering The Way of Water, as the hyper-expensive 20th Century sequel lands a peculiar 13 years after the first in a massive planned series from Oscar-winning titan James Cameron. Whether the film can sustain audience interest to the tune of the first film's $2.8 billion global haul after that time gap is key to determining whether Avatar 2 is written off as a disappointment or heralded as an Academy Awards comeback for Cameron. Either way, it's a virtual guarantee that golden accolades will flow in favor of the project's innovative special effects and dazzling technical elements.
<i>Babylon</i>
Damien Chazelle's La La Land follow-up First Man failed to launch into the Best Picture race, but his glittery tale of yesteryear's Tinsel Town (Brad Pitt! Margot Robbie!) aims to pave his golden back to the Oscars.
<i>Blonde</i>
Since her star-making turn in Knives Out and scene-stealing role in Daniel Craig's final Bond film, Ana de Armas has steadily risen in the ranks of Hollywood on the verge of a supernova break. That could finally come as she takes on the iconic legacy of Marilyn Monroe in Andrew Dominik's Blonde, a fictionalized account of the Hollywood legend's life. Normally, an ascending star playing a real-life historical figure would feel like a given for Oscar attention, but early reports seem to indicate that Blonde — which was slapped with an NC-17 rating — could push the limits of "biopic" territory beyond what audiences (and the industry) are willing to accept. Dominik already suggested the project won't necessarily fulfill expectations, as it rolls out through the lens of "a person whose rational picture of the world as being overwhelmed by her unconscious." Translation: If you're looking for a Wikipedia-as-movie biographical account of Monroe's life, look somewhere else. If last year's Kristen Stewart-fronted Princess Diana ghost story/fever dream/cinematic impressionist interpretation of royal history Spencer is any indication, Blonde could be a tough sell — but, like its subject, the work of the woman at the center could emerge through the chatter en route to greatness.
<i>Cha Cha Real Smooth</i>
Ahead of becoming the first streamer to win Best Picture with CODA, Apple TV+ made the most expensive purchase at Sundance when it nabbed the Audience Award-winning, Cooper Raiff-helmed dramedy also starring a recently overlooked (The Lost Daughter, anyone?) Dakota Johnson.
<i>Elvis</i>
Baz Luhrmann is hit (Moulin Rouge!) or expensive miss (Australia) when it comes to narrative quality, but even his middling projects are rife with visual decadence. All of his features since Romeo + Juliet have bagged at least one crafts Oscar nod. Expect the same from the Tom Hanks-starring biopic Elvis.
<i>Everything Everywhere All at Once</i>
Money talks on the awards trail, and Everything Everywhere All at Once has its hot-dogged fist clenched on the loudest bullhorn of the year so far. With $47 million in domestic ticket sales (and counting), Oscar voters can't ignore the success of A24's organic hit, which audiences and critics will continue to champion as the season chugs along. Atop passion for the film's experimental, boundary-pushing visuals and narrative (the film follows a woman traversing various universes containing her own alternate lives), iconic, overdue actress Michelle Yeoh's central performance is a career-best turn from the Crouching Tiger and Crazy Rich Asians star. Count on critics groups — and Twitter masses — to give this one a second wind as the year draws to a close, likely making it difficult for Oscar voters to ignore.
<i>The Fabelmans</i>
The future looks pretty — oh, so pretty — for Steven Spielberg's West Side Story follow-up. The Academy's eyes and ears loved his interpretation of a classic musical, but the icon aims for their hearts in this semi-autobiographical meditation on his childhood.
<i>Good Luck to You, Leo Grande</i>
Emma Thompson struck an electric, sexy chord at Sundance as a retired widow who hires a sex worker (Daryl McCormack) for a night of self-discovery. Searchlight saw the gilded potential, and dropped $7.5 million for the rights out of the festival.
<i>Lightyear</i>
Few things are more powerful than Disney's infinite hold on the Best Animated Feature category. Enter Lightyear, the studio's animated blockbuster that rockets into orbit, fueled by nostalgia (it's a Buzz Lightyear origin story oozing with Toy Story history) and director Angus MacLane's track record. The first-time solo feature director has had a hand in shaping beloved Disney titles as an animator, with credits like A Bug's Life, Toy Story 2, Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, WALL-E, Up and more already amongst his glittering career constellation.
<i>Next Goal Wins</i>
Taika Waititi's follow-up to the Oscar-winning Jojo Rabbit continues to ride a will-it-or-won't-it-drop path to release. Searchlight still hasn't confirmed a concrete date, so we're unclear on whether or not the film will make the cut in time for the 2023 Oscars; if it does, hopes remain high that a talented cast including Michael Fassbender and Elisabeth Moss will drive an inspirational sports story forward as they tell the story of an impassioned soccer coach who takes his American Samoa team from one of the worst in the world to the 2014 FIFA World Cup. It's undoubtedly safer territory than the Nazi satire of Jojo Rabbit (as we wrote in last year's Oscars forecast, it's safe to say Hitler won't serve as an imaginary friend to any children in this film), but it's clear that Waititi's penchant for witty dialogue and against-all-odds characters (the team once lost a match by 31 points) could help elevate and reframe the time-tested underdog story through a lens we've yet to see before.
<i>She Said</i>
Not even five years after New York Times journalists Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey changed the film industry (and awards season) forever with their reporting on Harvey Weinstein's sexual abuses, Hollywood came knocking with a big-screen adaptation starring Zoe Kazan and Carey Mulligan. It won't be hard to get audiences to watch the film community processing its own trauma on the big screen with someone like Mulligan, fresh off her nomination for Promising Young Woman, leading the charge — the success of She Said on the Oscars circuit, however, might depend on how much the film implicates the industry machine (including potential voters) that surrounded Weinstein for years.
<i>Shirley</i>
Regina King is bringing life to one of American history's trailblazing political queens. The Oscar-winning If Beale Street Could Talk actress here teams with John Ridley (Academy Award winner for 12 Years a Slave) to tell the story of Shirley Chisholm, the first Black congresswoman in the United States. The Academy's enduring affection for films about real-life figures (three of the last four Best Actress winners played historical women) and King's track record in the industry (one Oscar, four Emmys, two Critics Choice Awards) could convene in spectacular fashion if the film rolls out this year.
<i>The Son</i>
Florian Zeller's Holy Trinity continues: Sandwiched between The Father and The Mother sits The Son, the playwright's forthcoming adaptation of his stage production of the same name. With Hugh Jackman, Laura Dern, and Vanessa Kirby joining Anthony Hopkins — who won an Oscar for The Father, mind you — expect this acting showcase to tap into the same vein as Zeller's previous big-screen outing.
<i>Tár</i>
Cate Blanchett appears to be in full chaos mode in Tár's menacing first trailer, which teases a deliriously intense journey into the cutthroat world of classical music. Following the Oscar-winning actress as fictional composer Lydia Tár, the clip serves up tonally manic Whiplash vibes, flitting back and forth between a haunting slow-motion shot of its star blowing smoke from her mouth blended with images of her furiously conducting an orchestra with her eyes shut. The clip's energy is enough to pique one's interest, but things get even more interesting when you consider that Tár marks three-time nominee Todd Field's first feature since 2006's Little Children, signaling a crescendo of pent-up energy from a writer-director who's ready to roar for the first time in 16 years.
<i>Thor: Love and Thunder</i>
Most of us assume Marvel spectacles will land technical nods (we know the sound is going to be, like, really good) — but the Oscar-verified pedigree fueling Thor: Love and Thunder (Taika Waititi, Natalie Portman, Christian Bale) suggests potential above-the-line traction, too.
<i>Till</i>
Since winning for Ghost in 1991, Whoopi Goldberg hasn't had a meaty role that's allowed her to flex like the powerhouse dramatic actress that she is. Her turn in Chinonye Chukwu's historical drama — about the 1955 lynching of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old Black Mississippi boy, and his mother's (Danielle Deadwyler) pursuit of justice — already feels like a contender on paper, given Goldberg's stature coupled with Chukwu's trajectory after the 2019 drama Clemency starring a career-best Alfre Woodard.
<i>Top Gun: Maverick</i>
Lady Gaga said she spent "years" penning "Hold My Hand," the anthemic arena-rock single written as the lead single from the Top Gun: Maverick soundtrack. Off to a muted start on the American charts, the signature tune from Tom Cruise's upcoming nostalgia-fueled sequel to director Tony Scott's classic '80s action staple has yet to make the same kind of pop cultural impact as Berlin's Academy Award-winning Top Gun cut "Take My Breath Away." But, Gaga's pair of prior Best Original Song nods (including one victory) indicate passion for the star's work could ignite like jet fuel on the awards trail.
<i>The Whale</i>
To follow Brendan Fraser's return to Hollywood is to know the art of sleuthing — and trust us, it's been difficult to track, but no less satisfying. From his supporting role as a disturbed prison guard in Showtime's The Affair to a recurring part in the thriller series Condor, Fraser has quietly built himself back up from his blockbuster heyday. His upcoming partnership with acclaimed Black Swan filmmaker Darren Aronofsky stands to be his most significant cinematic career entry in decades, as he toplines The Whale in an Oscar-baity transformative role (he plays a gay man grappling with life-threatening obesity) from an Oscar-verified distributor (A24), all while surrounded by a stellar cast that includes Downsizing's Hong Chau, Samantha Morton, and Stranger Things breakout Sadie Sink.
<i>When You Finish Saving the World</i>
Jesse Eisenberg's directorial debut earned so-so reviews at Sundance, though standout praise for Julianne Moore's turn as a mother struggling to connect with her son might've cleared a path for A24 to campaign her to a sixth nomination.
<i>White Noise</i>
Noah Baumbach returns to the awards race for the first time since 2019, again teaming with his Marriage Story Best Actor nominee Adam Driver for a film about a professor grappling with a cataclysmic event involving a chemical spill in his small town. The film was recently announced as the opening night selection for the 2022 Venice International Film Festival, a slot that has, across the last decade, also hosted Oscar-bound titles like Birdman, La La Land, First Man, and last year's Parallel Mothers — a good omen for a film about characters navigating a literally toxic situation.
<i>The Woman King</i>
Viola Davis is Hollywood royalty, whose career lives up to the noble title of Gina Prince-Bythewood's latest, The Woman King. Early film stills suggest Davis is all ferocious heart and fiery grit as the leader of the Dahomey Amazons military regiment in West Africa.
<i>Women Talking</i>
It's been 10 years since screenwriting nominee Sarah Polley directed a feature, and the amount of Oscar-approved talent (Frances McDormand, Rooney Mara, Jessie Buckley, Brad Pitt's Best Picture-winning company Plan B) who lined up for her return suggests they smell gold in this tale of Mennonite women reconciling with sexual trauma.
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