Who Are The Frontrunners For The 2021 Oscars?

After spending a reported $35 million per Oscar win this year, conventional wisdom suggests Netflix could find better ways to use its money. But the streaming service might have an even stronger lineup of films in 2020 than last year’s group, which landed 24 total nominations including two for Best Picture. Leading the charge is David Fincher’s Mank, about Citizen Kane screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz (former Best Actor winner Gary Oldman) and his battles with Orson Welles (The Souvenir breakout Tom Burke). It’s Fincher’s first movie since Gone Girl in 2014 and its subject matter seems tailor-made for Academy members who often love rewarding movies about movies. As an added bonus, the script was written by Fincher’s father, Jack, giving Netflix’s awards team a personal narrative on which to capitalize as well. Despite being one of the most acclaimed filmmakers of the last 40 years, Fincher has never won an Oscar.

Speaking of overdue Academy recognition, Ron Howard’s Hillbilly Elegy stars both Amy Adams (six nominations and zero wins) and Glenn Close (seven nominations and zero wins) in a timely adaptation of a book touted by the New York Times as being able to help explain why Donald Trump won the 2016 election.

The battle between red and blue states is also at the heart of The Prom, Ryan Murphy’s adaptation of the Tony-nominated musical that stars Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman, Kerry Washington, James Corden, and Andrew Rannels and focuses on a group of Broadway stars who travel to conservative Indiana town to help a young woman after she’s barred from taking her girlfriend to prom.

Netflix has so many options, in fact, that it can even get away with burying something like Dee Rees’ The Last Thing He Wanted (out this week), an adaptation of the Joan Didion book with Anne Hathway and Ben Affleck in starring roles that was savaged by critics at the Sundance Film Festival last month. But we’d be remiss if we didn’t highlight four other movies of note: Oscar-winner Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods with Black Panther star Chadwick Boseman; Oscar-winner Charlie Kaufman’s I’m Thinking of Ending Things with Kirsten Dunst and Jesse Plemons; The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford director Andrew Domink’s Blonde, with Knives Out star Ana de Armas as Marilyn Monroe; and Kill List filmmaker Ben Wheatley’s new take on Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, which was famously adapted by Alfred Hitchcock in 1940 and won Best Picture. Assuming all four arrive on Netflix in 2020 (Blonde has not yet been announced as a release), expect the streamer’s awards consultants to work overtime to bring each to the forefront.

2021 OSCAR FRONTRUNNERS

• Best Picture: Mank, The Prom, Hillbilly Elegy, Rebecca
• Best Director: David Fincher, Mank; Spike Lee, Da 5 Bloods, Andrew Dominik, Blonde
• Best Actor: Gary Oldman, Mank; Jesse Plemons, I’m Thinking of Ending Things
• Best Actress: Ana de Armas, Blonde; Amy Adams, Hillbilly Elegy; Lily James, Rebecca; Meryl Streep, The Prom

Fincher and Lee aren’t the only auteurs putting out movies in 2020. This year will see new films coming from Christopher Nolan (Tenet), Wes Anderson (The French Dispatch), a solo Joel Coen (Macbeth), Paul Greengrass (News of the World), Ridley Scott (The Last Duel), and Steven Spielberg (West Side Story).

Of that group, Nolan’s feature might be the most exciting: an original story that looks like another large-scale epic from a filmmaker long denied favor from the Academy. His cast, too, is loaded with actors who feel like they’re on the cusp of becoming perennial Oscar favorites, including Robert Pattinson and John David Washington.

But the guess here is that The Last Duel will wind up as the year’s most anticipated movie when all is said and done. Based on a script by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck (their first collaboration since Good Will Hunting) and Nicole Holofcener and starring Damon, Affleck, Adam Driver, and Jodie Comer, the medieval drama feels like an Oscar front-runner just waiting to be taken down a peg by anonymous voters and Film Twitter alike.

2021 OSCAR FRONTRUNNERS

• Best Picture: Tenet, West Side Story, The Last Duel
• Best Director: Christopher Nolan, Tenet; Steven Spielberg, West Side Story; Ridley Scott, The Last Duel
• Best Actor: John David Washington, Tenet; Adam Driver, The Last Duel; Tom Hanks, News of the World; Denzel Washington, Macbeth
• Best Actress: Jodie Comer, The Last Duel; Rachel Zegler, West Side Story; Frances McDormand, Macbeth

Thanks to Black Panther and Joker, comic book movies are no longer Oscar pariahs, which means prognosticators have to take seriously a pair of 2020 releases in the genre. June brings Wonder Woman 1984, Patty Jenkins’ highly anticipated follow-up to Wonder Woman, which felt thisclose to the Academy Awards race in 2017. If Jenkins can stick the landing on the sequel, expect Warner Bros. to push hard for her come awards season.

Then in November, Marvel and Disney will release The Eternals. Which, sure, doesn’t scream Oscar — it’s a space adventure about celestial beings that has a distinct Guardians of the Galaxy vibe to its premise. But its director is Chloe Zhao, who broke out in 2017 with The Rider and is poised to take a leap to the next level this year. If The Eternals is an unexpected delight, does a campaign for Zhao materialize, especially as the Academy continues to face criticism for ignoring female filmmakers? It’s definitely too early to tell, but expect Zhao to be part of the conversation in some fashion: she’s also got the movie Nomadland with Frances McDormand potentially arriving this year as well.

2021 OSCAR FRONTRUNNERS

• Best Director: Patty Jenkins, Wonder Woman 1984; Chloe Zhao, The Eternals

William Goldman’s sage words have been repeated countless times by entertainment journalists through time, but let’s pour some out for the late great again: nobody knows anything, especially when it comes to awards. So while the movies listed above certainly feel like contenders, it’s anyone’s guess where the next Parasite or even Jojo Rabbit might come from. For now, let’s leave with a plug for two films that made waves at the Sundance Film Festival in January: Emerald Fennell’s Promising Young Woman, a so-called “#metoo revenge film” that stars Carey Mulligan in a major star turn, and Lee Isaac Chung’s Minari, an A24 family drama with Steven Yuen in a lead role.

2021 OSCAR FRONTRUNNERS

• Best Actress: Carey Mulligan, Promising Young Woman
• Best Actor: Steven Yuen, Minari

Christopher Rosen is a writer and editor who lives in Maplewood, New Jersey and still thinks Lady Bird should have won Best Picture. Follow him on Twitter: @chrisjrosen