The Eight Biggest Story Lines Heading Into the 2024 Oscars

Traditionally, the Oscars race begins in the fall, when one contender debuts after the other, resulting in a pileup of ambitious films vying to compete at the following spring’s Academy Awards. This time it was different. The seismic event known as “Barbenheimer,” the same-day release of Barbie and Oppenheimer on July 21, didn’t just prove that two remarkable, dramatically different movies could find success sharing the same multiplex—it announced two early entries in the award competition to come.

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In some respects, Barbenheimer never ended. The two movies’ presence on (or absence from) the list of nominees for the 96th Academy Awards has been a major part of the lead-up to Sunday’s ceremony. But they’re not the whole story. Though it was already obvious that Barbie and Oppenheimer would be major events this time last year, the latter months of 2023 weren’t short of surprises. A year ago, Da’Vine Joy Randolph was a respected character actress but hardly a household name. Her work in The Holdovers changed that, leading to a Supporting Actress nomination (and a likely win). Sandra Hüller likely won’t triumph in the Leading Actress category, but her work in The Zone of Interest and Anatomy of a Fall have raised the profile of a talented performer mostly unknown outside Germany. A year ago no one was talking about either of them. So what are we talking about now as the Oscars approach? Here are a few of the most intriguing narratives.

Will Oppenheimer win everything?

Only three films have ever made a clean sweep of the Academy Awards’ five top categories (Best Picture, Actress, Actor, Director, and Screenplay): It Happened One Night, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and Silence of the Lambs. It’s not possible for Oppenheimer to repeat that, as Christopher Nolan’s biopic about the father of the atomic bomb did not score a Best Actress nod, but the film could very well win everything else, including Best Picture. And if Oppenheimer picks up awards in technical categories like Sound and Editing early in the night, its performance could start to feel like a sweep anyway.

Oppenheimer’s not invulnerable, however. Adapted from Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin’s 2005 biography, American Prometheus, it might encounter competition in the Best Adapted Screenplay category. The screenplay awards, both adapted and original, can be unpredictable. Eight of the past 10 Best Picture winners—Everything Everywhere All at Once, Parasite, Green Book, Spotlight, Moonlight, Birdman, CODA, and 12 Years a Slave—have picked up their corresponding screenplay award, but a curveball is never out of the question.

Oppenheimer’s competition includes Barbie (which was moved to the Adapted Screenplay category despite campaigning for an Original slot), and Vegas oddsmakers currently favor Cord Jefferson’s script for American Fiction, an adaptation of Percival Everett’s 2001 novel Erasure. Either could win (and an especially strong case could be made for Barbie). Cillian Murphy remains the favorite to win Best Actor, but a Paul Giamatti win wouldn’t be particularly shocking. And, as suggested above, Randolph will take Best Supporting Actress, not Oppenheimer’s Emily Blunt. In short, Oppenheimer will win a lot, but not everything, and perhaps not every award it conceivably could win.

Is any category more locked in than Best Supporting Actor?

If there are any sure things, for Oppenheimer or any other movie, it’s Robert Downey Jr.’s win as Best Supporting Actor for his performance as Lewis Strauss, J. Robert Oppenheimer’s main antagonist. Downey’s been campaigning heavily, and he’s already picked up numerous awards leading up to the Oscars, including a BAFTA and a Golden Globe (which for some reason we’re taking seriously again after its scandals and near collapse just a few years ago). Above all, it’s a matter of timing. Downey’s lived a Hollywood-esque comeback story. His talent has never been in dispute, but he’s been virtually locked into Marvel movies for over a decade (and, to a lesser extent, Sherlock Holmes movies, with a disastrous attempt to play Dr. Dolittle thrown into the mix). Oppenheimer served as a reminder that he can still do some capital-A Acting in a role that played to his strengths portraying smart, verbose, not entirely trustworthy men. This one will belong to him.

Is the Barbie snub real (and how many times will it be referenced)?

Like its Barbenheimer counterpart, Barbie picked up a bunch of nominations—eight in total—including Best Picture and Best Supporting Actress, the latter for America Ferrera. But there were some conspicuous omissions, chief among them a Best Director nomination for Greta Gerwig and a Best Actress nomination for Margot Robbie. Whether that was just a matter of tough competition or an unwillingness to give too many nominations to a film directed by a woman that put feminist issues front and center has been a matter of discussion. (Ryan Gosling’s nomination as Ken, however deserved, has only reinforced some of the film’s central points.) There’s no answering the question for sure, but don’t be surprised to hear about it a lot on Sunday. Ultimately, Barbie will probably walk away with at least one or two awards—look out for the aforementioned screenplay category, as well as production or costume design, and Best Original Song (more on this in a bit).

What are the most likely upsets?

Lily Gladstone has seemed like a lock for Best Actress for her great work in Killers of the Flower Moon since the film’s debut. Gladstone becoming the first Native American to win an acting Oscar (apart from Wes Studi’s honorary award in 2020) for a film deeply concerned with the oppression of Native Americans and the way history has systematically ignored their stories would make for a remarkable moment. But what if it doesn’t happen? An Emma Stone win for Poor Things remains a possibility, and her emotionally rich, go-for-broke work as an intellectually curious Frankenstein-like creation would be something to celebrate—almost any other year.

Why is everyone being so weird about Bradley Cooper (and will this be the end of it)?

Seriously, why? His Leonard Bernstein biopic, Maestro, picked up a bunch of major nominations, including Best Picture, Actor (for Cooper), Actress (Carey Mulligan), and Original Screenplay (also for Cooper, who cowrote the script with Josh Singer), which are achievements people have mostly been making fun of. There’s no doubt Cooper’s been campaigning hard for the film. But you know who else campaigned hard for an Academy Award? Just about everyone who’s ever won one. An odd schadenfreude has followed Cooper and the project all year. Maybe it’s because he so obviously wants to be considered a major filmmaker. Maybe it’s because few consider the film a home run, even though it’s a big swing. Even so, it’s at least a solid single, maybe even a ground-rule double. Cooper’s quite talented at acting and directing, and it feels like he’s working toward making a truly great film, even if Maestro isn’t it. Why punish that?

Will Billie Eilish earn half an EGOT with one song (again)?

Probably! Eilish is nominated for her Barbie song, “What Was I Made For?,” which seems the likely winner despite competition from the same film’s “I’m Just Ken.” Cowritten with her brother, Finneas, it’s already won a Song of the Year prize at the Grammys. Eilish and Finneas won both a Grammy and an Oscar two years ago for their theme for No Time to Die, and a win on Sunday would make the 22-year-old Eilish the youngest two-time Oscar winner in history. That’s once again half an EGOT for a single song. But here’s a question: How will she win an Emmy and a Tony? The way her career is going, she’s got plenty of time to figure it out.

Will Jimmy Kimmel be a good host?

There’s every reason to think he will. Kimmel has emerged as the best of the Oscars’ latter-day hosts: funny, professional, and just biting enough to give the night an edge. This will be Kimmel’s fourth go-round as host. He played the part in 2017, 2018, and again in 2023. The Oscars’ less-than-memorable years without a host makes him look even better by comparison. (Though it’s not really fair to factor in the COVID-plagued, Steven Soderbergh–produced 2021 Oscars, and the combination of Regina Hall, Amy Schumer, and Wanda Sykes in 2022 worked relatively well, though no one remembers anything about that night except The Slap.)

How political will this year’s ceremony be?

Kimmel has said in interviews that politics should not be the night’s focus, even if he’ll probably use it for a joke or two (as he’s done in the past). The X factor is, well, everyone else. And between the Israel-Hamas war, an upcoming election summoning memories of one of the candidate’s previous coup attempts, Ukraine, climate change, and everything else, the night should offer plenty of reasons for winners to use their moment in the spotlight to discuss urgent issues. The appropriateness has been a matter of debate since before Marlon Brando sent Sacheen Littlefeather to the stage in 1973, but consider this: Last year, Navalny, a film about Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, won in the the Best Documentary Feature category. Accepting the award, the subject’s wife, now widow, Yulia Navalny, told the audience that her husband was “in prison just for telling the truth … just for defending democracy.” Such moments can provide a stark reminder that there’s a world outside movies and awards, even if it’s easy to forget that for a few hours once a year.

Keith Phipps is a writer and editor specializing in film and TV. Formerly: Uproxx, The Dissolve, and The A.V. Club.