October and November are seeing the releases of some of the huge contenders for the Oscars next year well before award season has begun. We’ve no idea how well any of these films are going to do critically seeing as none of them have actually been released to mainstream audiences. This isn’t an award by award breakdown but we’re giving you a brief guide as to what could be nominated in “the big six” awards at world’s biggest annual movie event. I’m also ranking the potential nominees by their likelihood of winning by colour: red means most likely to win, blue means second most likely and green means I’ve ranked them third.
Best Supporting Actress
Cate Blanchett – The Monuments Men
Cameron Diaz – The Counsellor
Julianne Moore – Carrie
Michelle Pfeiffer – The Family
Kristen Wiig – The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
Best Supporting Actor
Barkhad Abdi – Captain Phillips
Benedict Cumberbatch – 12 Years A Slave
Jean Dujardin – The Monuments Men
Jonah Hill – The Wolf of Wall Street
Tommy Lee Jones – The Family
Best Leading Actress
Sandra Bullock – Gravity
Nicole Kidman – Grace of Monaco
Jennifer Lawrence – The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
Chloe Grace Moretz – Carrie
Emma Thompson – Saving Mr. Banks
Best Leading Actor
George Clooney – Gravity
Steve Coogan – Philomena
Leonardo di Caprio – The Wolf of Wall Street
Tom Hanks – Captain Phillips or Saving Mr. Banks (undecided)
Ben Stiller – The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
Best Director
Alfonso Cauron – Gravity
George Clooney – The Monuments Men
Paul Greengrass – Captain Phillips
Martin Scorsese – The Wolf of Wall Street
Ben Stiller – The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
Best Picture
12 Years A Slave
American Hustle
Captain Phillips
The Counsellor
Gravity
The Monuments Men
Out of the Furnace
Saving Mr. Banks
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
The Wolf of Wall Street
So, these are my beginning of season suggestions for who will be nominated at this prestigious event. We’re now going to talk through those films and actors that I haven’t included but could be major contenders. There’s a huge cast for The Monuments Men which I haven’t fully gone over. I’ve put George Clooney, who I’ve already selected for Best Director for this film, in for Best Leading Actor for Gravity not The MM but he could easily win for both. Stars of The Monuments Men like Matt Damon, John Goodman, Bill Murray, Hugh Bonneville and Bob Balaban could squeeze into the supporting actor position that I placed Dujardin in. Dujardin is already popular with the academy after his Lead Actor win in 2012 for The Artist and as likely could get a nomination for The Wolf of Wall Street instead of The Monuments Men.
Wolf of Wall Street could do very well. Jonah Hill may seem like a surprise nominee but remember that he got similar recognition at the 2012 Oscars for Moneyball. I’ve only put Nicole Kidman forward for this film but Grace of Monaco is a noteworthy contender for a Best Pic nomination. American Hustle is only in one award on my list but the stellar cast of Jeremy Renner, Jennifer Lawrence (whose already in for Hunger Games 2), Amy Adams, Bradley Cooper and Christian Bale. I think it will win Best Original Screenplay however.
Other potential nominees are the aforementioned Bale for Out of the Furnace, for which Casey Affleck and Zoe Saldana could also be in contention. Dame Judi Dench could get into the actress categories for Philomena. Robert De Niro stars in both American Hustle and The Family and could crack into the shortlists. Colin Farrel and Paul Giamatti came close to my lists for Saving Mr. Banks. 12 Years A Slave could through in Brad Pitt, Michael Fassbender, Paul Dano and Quvenzhane Wallis back into the award scene while The Counsellor could do the same for Fassbender, Pitt, Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem as well as it’s director Sir Ridley Scott. We can’t rule out other entries like All is Lost with Robert Redford, The Book Thief with Geoffrey Rush and Emily Watson or Inside Llewyn Davis (the Coen brothers’ folk tale with Oscar Isaac, Justin Timberlake and Carey Mulligan). Spike Lee’s mysterious action remake Oldboy could creep in with it’s stars Josh Brolin, Samuel L Jackson, Elizabeth Olsen, Hannah Simone and Sharlto Copley.
It’s not too late to remove this year’s earlier hits like The Great Gatsby (Baz Luhrmann directing Leonardo di Caprio, Tobey Maguire, Carey Mulligan and Joel Edgerton), Blue Jasmine (Woody Allen directing Cate Blanchett and Alec Baldwin), Prisoners (Hugh Jackman, Paul Dano, Viola Davis, Melissa Leo, Terrence Howard and Jake Gyllenhaal in the directing of Denis Villeneuve) and Rush (Ron Howard’s biopic with Chris Hemsworth and Daniel Bruhl). Blockbuster action films like the upcoming The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, Ender’s Game or 47 Ronin have been known to do well as the Oscars (see The Dark Knight, Inception and a few others) and there’s usually a surprise foreign language film in the mix (like Amour). There’s a whole variety of films that could be next year’s nominees but I think the leaders are: Gravity, Captain Phillips, The Wolf of Wall Street, The Monuments Men and The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.
Find out more about these films at our Future Films pages for 2013 and 2014.
The 86th Academy Awards will be hosted by Ellen De Generes and will be on ABC on March 2nd 2014
Tell us in the comments who YOU think will win big at the 2014 Oscars.
Josh Gad’s character in Frozen, this week’s US and UK box office number one.
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