New poster for Oldboy plus new roles for Emma Watson and Jennifer Lawrence

Oldboy is Spike Lee’s English language remake of Chan-Wook Park’s award winning 2003 thriller (also ranked 85th on IMDB’s Top 250 films of all time) of the same name. Ten years on, Josh Brolin (No Country for Old Men, The Goonies) is the headline star with Samuel L Jackson (Jurassic Park, Avenger Assemble), Elizabeth Olsen (Like Crazy, soon to be Scarlet Witch in Avengers: Age of Ultron), Hannah Simone (New Girl) and Sharlto Copley (District 9, Elysium) in support. His character, Joe, is the centre of a plot that sees him seeking vengeance on those who imprisoned him for 20 years without a cause, as well as seeking answers and going in search of the mysterious girl with a yellow umbrella. The new poster for the film was unveiled yesterday, as was some fairly gruesome footage of the movie at The 2013 New York Comic-Con.

Moving on, two of the most popular young actresses of the moment have picked up new roles in completely unrelated films. First off, it’s Emma Watson. Out of the central trio of young heroes in the Harry Potter series, Watson has possibly been the most critically successful since the series conclusion . She cropped up in My Week With Marilyn, had a celebrity cameo in This is the End, will star with Anthony Hopkins, Russell Crowe, Logan Lerman and Ray Winstone in Darren Aronofsky’s biblical epic Noah and had lead roles in the indie dramas The Bling Ring The Perks of Being a Wallflower. She could now be reuniting with her Wallflower director Stephen Chbosky for While We’re Young, although it’s becoming apparent that Noah Baumbach (The Squid and the Whale, Frances Ha) may be directing after all.

Adena Halpern’s novel 29 (which itself has a plot – the story of a grandmother who’s much more friendly with her 29 year old grandaughter than her 55 year old daughter and gets her wish of becoming the same age of her grandaughter again granted – similar to Zac Efron flick 17 Again – were an elderly man has his wish granted and is once again his young self at high-school) is the inspiration for this production. Amanda Seyfried (Les Miserables, Mama Mia), Naomi Watts (King-Kong, The Impossible) and Ben Stiller (Zoolander, Tropic Thunder) are already going to star. According to IMDB, Watson has just started filming While We’re Young and will make that her third film of 2014 (alongside Noah – March 28th – and Your Voice in My Head).

The other young star is one of The Hunger Games, X-Men: First Class, Winter’s Bone and Silver Linings Playbook fame: Academy Award winner Jennifer Lawrence. Katniss Everdeen, as we like to call her, was attached to star in The Glass Castle in April 2012, just after the release of The Hunger Games. Since then, there’s been a halt in development after her Oscar win and a tonne of other roles coming her way (including reprising the role of Mystique in X-Men: Days of Future Past, East of Eden, American Hustle, Dumb and Dumber To and The Hunger Games’ sequels). We can presume that she’s close to sealing her role in the film that now has Destin Crettin (whose new drama Short Term 12 is getting all kinds of acclaim at the moment) set to direct.

Oldboy – December 6th

While We’re Young – 2014 or 2015

The Glass Castle – 2016?

Tuorhoth’s first predictions for the 2014 Academy Awards

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.