As an older ‘popcorn actress’ looks to secure her first Academy Award for a role in a body horror at the age of 62, an ingenue upstart playing a escort that marries a Russian oligarch looks poised to upset. Perhaps, it’s the second-generation veteran from Brazil with a late surge, or a Wicked performance that could secure the youngest EGOT in history. Best Actress promises to be full of surprises, while Best Actor sees the youngest winner in category history defend his crown against the hottest actor in Hollywood who’s gunning for his record.
All five of the movies from these performances are up for Best Picture, a category with ten of the biggest films from 2024. Yet, only one can win. TWM has previously examined which five are likely to be most win-competitive this year, and it’s between Anora and Conclave. Yet, this Academy Award season has been one of its craziest, with most categories still up for grabs on the day of the ceremony. Follow us along tonight as we explore the biggest stories and the ultimate winners in real-time. The ceremony begins at 7 EST on ABC, streaming live on Hulu. Will Zoe Saldana become the second veteran actor to leave the MCU and win an Oscar in as many years, or will it be Isabella Rossellini receiving her flowers? Can one of the most famous pop stars on the planet upset both and win the most prestigious award in acting? Is Kieran Culkin sweeping the season or will it be his former Succession castmate eking out a win for a ‘strong’ performance?
Nominees and Results:
There are ten nominees vying for Best Picture, and five films searching for an Oscar across twenty-two other categories. The nominees are:
Best Supporting Actor: Kieran Culkin (A Real Pain), Yura Borisov (Anora), Edward Norton (A Complete Unknown), Jeremy Strong (The Apprentice), Guy Pearce (The Brutalist).
Following a scintillating performance from the nominees from Wicked of Defying Gravity, Conan O’Brien pulled no punches in his speech, with a dazzling entrance that honored The Substance. Robert Downey Jr., last years Best Supporting Actor for his role in Oppenheimer, presented this years to Kieran Culkin, a first-time nominee and winner. Culkin’s speech hinted on a deal he made with his wife that required him to win an Oscar, something she never thought he’d do.
Best Animated Feature Film: Flow, The Wild RobotInside Out 2, Memoir of a Snail, Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl.
Goldie Hawn, 1970 Best Supporting Actress for Cactus Flower and 2x nominee Andrew Garfield present Best Animated Feature to Flow, an independent animated film with no spoken language from Latvia that follows a cat as he flows through a river. This marks a major win for foreign animation, independent animation, and Janus Films as a distributor while beating out films from PIXAR, Netflix and Dreamworks. Conan has confirmed that it is Latvia’s first ever Academy Award.
Best Animated Short Film: In The Shadow of the Cypress, Magic Candies, Wander to Wonder, Beautiful Men, Yuck!.
Shirin Sohari and Hossein Moyelami accept the Oscar for Best Animated Short, a 20-minute film out of Iran, the film focused on PTSD. The two didn’t even have their visas until this morning, and landed in LA three hours ago.
Best Costume Design: Wicked, Conclave, A Complete Unknown, Gladiator II, Nosferatu.
Bowen Yang (Wicked), Connie Nielsen (Gladiator II), Elle Fanning (A Complete Unknown), Lily Depp (Nosferatu), and John Lithgow (Conclave) presented costume design while representing their films. Yang showed up in his own costume, while the others did not. Each shared their favorite parts of their films costume designer. Paul Tazewell, in his second nomination, brings home his first Academy Award and the first for Wicked on the evening. Tazewell designed over 1,000 costumes that ended up being used in Wicked.
Original Screenplay: Anora, The Substance, The Brutalist, September 5, A Real Pain.
SNL vet Amy Poehler introduced the screenplay awards. For Sean Baker, his first of four nominations on the night lands him his first Oscar. For a Best Picture hopeful, it could be the start of a massive night. Baker thanks the sex workers he interviewed that helped him gain an understanding of the work environment while writing the film.
Adapted Screenplay: Conclave, A Complete Unknown, Sing Sing, Nickel Boys, Emilia Perez.
Conclave keeps its neck-and-neck spot with Anora as it takes the other script award, beating out three other Best Picture hopefuls in the process.
Best Makeup and Hairstyling: The Substance, Wicked, A Different Man, Emilia Perez, Nosferatu.
Academy nominees June Squibb (Nebraska) and Scarlett Johansson (Jojo Rabbit, Marriage Story) present Best Makeup and Hairstyling. It marks the first win of the night for The Substance, and marks only the 22nd horror film to ever take home an Oscar. Pierre-Olivier Persin, Marilyne Scarselli, and Stephanie Guillon take home their very first Oscars.
Halle Berry, Academy Award winner for Monster’s Ball and Bond girl in Die Another Day, reminds the audience that the Academy the Governor Awards to Julia Taylor, Quincy Jones, Richard Curtis, as well as Bond producers Michael Wilson and Barbara Broccoli. Broccoli and Wilson recently sold the rights to Bond to Amazon, as the Academy honors the six decades of Bond movies under their purview. Margaret Qualley does Bond choreography on stage as Lisa sings Paul McCartney’s Live and Let Die, a song from Roger Moore’s first Bond film of the same name. Doja Cat performs Connery-era Diamonds are Forever. Raye sings Adele’s Skyfall from the Craig-era film of the same name.
Best Film Editing: Anora, The Brutalist, Emilia Perez, Conclave, Wicked.
Baker wins his second award in as many chances tonight with two remaining. Anora’s achievement in film editing is a statement after years of Baker’s deftly edited masterpieces. He thanks the three individuals he allows in the editing room with him: his wife, producer Alex Coco, and his dog. Hopefully the goodest boy in the room gets his own chew toy statuette.
Best Supporting Actress: Zoe Saldana (Emilia Perez), Isabella Rossellini (Conclave), Monica Barbaro (A Complete Unknown), Ariana Grande (Wicked), Felicity Jones (The Brutalist).
Last years winner, Holdovers star DaVine Randolph, presented and said some nice words about each performance given from nominees. Saldana, in her first nomination, gives an emotional speech in front of her family. This secures Emilia Perez as an Oscar-winning film in what could be its only award out of 13 nominations.
Best Production Design: Wicked, Conclave, Nosferatu, The Brutalist, Dune: Part II.
Severance creator and longtime comedic actor Ben Stiller presents production design while doing a bit where the stage production doesn’t work. Lee Sandale (1917, The War Horse), and Nathan Crowley (First Man, The Dark Knight, Interstellar, The Prestige, Dunkirk, Tenet) both receive their first Oscars for production design after multiple nominations and years of designing blockbusters.
Best Original Song: El Mal (Emilia Perez), The Journey (The Six Triple Eight), Mi Camino (Emilia Perez), Never Too Late (Elton John: Never Too Late), Like a Bird (Sing Sing).
Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger presents Best Original Song. It’s the second win for Emilia Perez. More importantly, Diane Warren has now gone 0-16 in her Oscar nominations in this category.
Best Documentary Short Film: The Only Girl in the Orchestra, Instruments of a Beating Heart, I Am Ready Warden, Death by Numbers.
Hulu’s own Only Murders in the Building star Selena Gomez, and legendary actor Sam Jackson (Jackie Brown, Goodfellas, The Incredibles) present the award to Molly O’Brien and Lisa Remington, two more first-time winners of the night.
Best Documentary Film: No Other Land, Black Box Diaries, Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat, Sugarcane, Pocerlain War.
The team of No Other Land (Rachel Szor, Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, and Hamdan Ballal) accept the award. The film is based on Adra’s own experiences as a Palestinian activist in Israel facing the military regime. The group consists of both Palestinian and Israeli journalists.
Best Sound: Dune: Part II, A Complete Unknown, Wicked, Emilia Perez, The Wild Robot.
Miles Teller, star of Best Sound recipients Whiplash and Top Gun: Maverick, presents the award with Miley Cyrus. Dune: Part II officially becomes an Oscar winner despite its underperformance in nominations. A true audio spectacle, the 2024 blockbuster seemed poised to win it the entire season.
Best Visual Effects: Dune: Part II, Alien: Romulus, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, Better Man, Wicked.
Upcoming stars for Snow White, Gal Gadot and Rachel Zegler, award the Oscar to Dune: Part II, its second award in as many minutes.
Best Live Action Short Film: I’m Not a Robot, A Lien, The Last Ranger, Anuja, The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent.
A man known simply as Trent is leaving with an Oscar, as is Victoria Warmerdam as Sterling Brown and Ana de Armas present Best Live Action Short. Warmerdam, apparently, is expecting Trent’s child.
Morgan Freeman, Gene Hackman’s Unforgiven co-star, comes on stage to do a tribute to the late Oscar winner. Freeman discusses his friendship and Hackman’s legacy. “I don’t think about legacy, I just hope people remember me as someone who tried to do good work,” a quote from Hackman according to Freeman. This opens the in memoriam, which includes legendary artists such as Teri Garr, Gena Rowlands, Kris Kristofferson, David Lynch, and Roger Corman. It finishes with looks at Lynch’s work (Twin Peaks, Mulholland Drive, Eraserhead, Blue Velvet), James Earl Jones (Field of Dreams), and Hackman (Unforgiven, The French Connection).
Best Cinematography: The Brutalist, Dune: Part II, Nosferatu, Maria, Emilia Perez.
Dave Bautista (Dune: Part II), Willem Dafoe (Nosferatu), Zoe Saldana (Emilia Perez), Joe Alwyn (The Brutalist), and Alba Rohrwacher (Maria) all come to the stage similar to costume design earlier in the eveing to discuss the cinematography on their films and their respective cameramen.
Lol Crawley wins the first award of the night for The Brutalist. Crawley has been partnering with Brutalist director Brady Corbet for many years, a staple of his work. That partnership has paid off in an Academy Award for Crawley.
Best International Feature Film: I’m Still Here, Emilia Perez, Flow, The Girl with the Needle, The Seed of Sacred Fig.
As Penelope Cruz announced I’m Still Here as the winner for Best International Feature, it ended one of the wildest best picture campaigns in recent memory for Emilia Perez. Yet, I’m Still Here, a late-surge thanks to Sony’s original season focus on The Room Next Door, rode squarely on its remarkable performance from lead actress Fernanda Torres, who looks to cause another upset later tonight. I’m Still Here was a subtle, yet harrowing look at the disappearance of Ruben Pavas, a former Brazilian Congressman who disappeared at the start of Brazilian’s far-right regime, and its impact on his family.
Best Score: The Brutalist, Conclave, The Wild Robot, Wicked, Emilia Perez.
Mark Hamill, in replacement of Star Wars co-star Harrison Ford, comes out to the Star Wars theme to present Best Original Score. As is tradition, the backing orchestra plays each score as introduced. Winner Daniel Blumberg says that director Brady Corbet is his musical soulmate. After 20 years as a musician, he’s pleased to accept on behalf of his collaborators.
The Color Purple stars Oprah Winfrey and Whoopi Goldberg express the impact of Quincy Jones. Queen Latifah performs Ease on Down the Road, a Quincy contribution to The Wiz.
Best Actor: Adrien Brody (The Brutalist), Timothee Chalamet (A Complete Unknown), Ralph Fiennes (Conclave), Colman Domingo (Sing Sing), Sebastian Stan (The Apprentice).
Adrien Brody has won his second in as many nominations, fighting off the challenge to break his record for youngest Best Actor recipient. Over two decades since his shocking win for The Pianist, Brody discusses how fleeting the opportunity is, believing he’d never get back here. He touched on how it’s his second role on the systemic oppression faced in war by the Jewish community, speaking out on antisemitism in the process.
He did not kiss presenter Cillian Murphy.
Best Director: Sean Baker (Anora), Brady Corbet (The Brutalist), Coralie Fargeat (The Substance), James Mangold (A Complete Unknown), Jacques Audiard (Emilia Perez).
Sean Baker has gone three-for-three, making Anora an almost-certainty for Best Picture. He thanks presenter Quentin Tarantino, whose film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is how he discovered Mikey Madison for the role of Anora. Baker’s speech focuses on the need to save the theatrical experience, as it’s the most important part of being a director.
Best Actress: Mikey Madison (Anora), Demi Moore (The Substance), Fernanda Torres (I’m Still Here), Cynthia Erivo (Wicked), Karla Sofia Gascon (Emilia Perez).
In perhaps the biggest upset of the night, Demi Moore did not take home the Oscar, rather Mikey Madison ahead of its likely Best Picture win completes a dominant night for Anora. A year after Emma Stone broke ground for a Best Actress win while playing a sex worker, Mikey Madison does the same thing. Hollywood, its next top female star has arrived.
Best Picture: Anora, Conclave, The Brutalist, A Complete Unknown, Wicked, The Substance, I’m Still Here, Dune: Part II, Emilia Perez, Nickel Boys.
A truly remarkable accomplishment for independent cinema, Anora has won Best Picture, NEON’s first since Parasite at the start of the decade. On a budget of only $6M, Anora became one of the industries most profitable films of the year, has launched Mikey Madison into stardom, and has now taken home a massive haul at the Academy Awards.
This wraps up the evening. Thank you for joining us for TWM’s coverage.
Follow me on Twitter here.
Follow me on BlueSky here.
Follow me on Letterboxd here.
