Oscars 2024 Best Picture Predictions: Who Will Win and Who Should Win

The Oscars 2024 ceremony is just a few days away, which means now is the time to get those Oscar predictions finalized.

The 96th Academy Awards will air this Sunday, March 10 at 7 p.m. ET on ABC. Jimmy Kimmel will once again lead the ceremony, marking the fourth time that the late-night comedian has hosted. As usual, many deserving films were nominated, and many were snubbed. But the 2023 movie event of the year was undeniably“Barbenheimer,” aka the simultaneous release of Greta Gerwig’s Barbie and Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, which brought movie goers to theaters in droves for an unusual double feature. Both Gerwig and Nolan’s films picked up quite a few nominations, including a Best Picture nomination for each film. Eight other films were nominated for Best Picture, including American Fiction, Anatomy of a Fall, The Holdovers, Killers of the Flower Moon, Maestro, Past Lives, Poor Things, and The Zone of Interest.

But who will be the ultimate winner? We won’t know for sure until Sunday night, but here’s our best guess at which movie will win Best Picture at the 2024 Oscars, and which movie should win Best Picture at the 2024 Oscars.

Oscars Best Picture Predictions 2024: Who Will Win

Oppenheimer is the favorite to win Best Picture at the 2024 Oscars, and for good reason. It already won Best Film at the British Academy Film Awards, and there are a fair few BAFTA members who are in the Academy, too. Same deal with the Director’s Guild and the Producers Guild, which awarded Nolan the top prizes for Outstanding Directing — Feature Film and gave the Oppenheimer producers the Outstanding Producer of Theatrical Motion Pictures award, respectively. We can assume those same people will also vote for Oppenheimer for Best Picture at the Oscars.

On top of that, Oppenheimer received aa total of 13 Oscar nominations, which is more than any other film this year, and one of the most-nominated films of all time (the all-time record is 14 nominations). That’s a strong indication that the Academy really, really liked Oppenheimer. And we definitely don’t endorse gambling, but for what it’s worth, the folks over at Action Network, a popular website used for sports betting, think that Oppenheimer has a 96.77 percent chance of winning Best Picture. (Disclosure time: Action Network has a partnership with Decider’s parent company, New York Post.)

So, yeah, based on that evidence, Oppenheimer will most likely win Best Picture on Sunday. That said, unlike the other categories at the Oscars, every member of the Academy is allowed, and encouraged, to vote for Best Picture. (In other categories, only certain members vote—for example, only the directors branch will vote for Best Director.) The Academy has over 9,000 voting members, and that has led to some fun Best Picture upsets, including Moonlight’s win in 2017 and Parasite‘s win in 2020. You just can’t accurately predict what 9,000 people are going to do! To that end, if there is a Best Picture upset this weekend, here’s who we hope will win.

Oscars Best Picture Predictions 2024: Who Should Win

Barbie should win Best Picture at the 2024 Oscars, if only because I’m still mad about Greta Gerwig’s snub for a Best Director nomination. I can see this upset happening, too. Think about it: Several Academy members, including co-stars Ryan Gosling and America Ferrara, have already expressed disappointment at the fact that both Gerwig and Robbie were snubbed in the directing and acting categories. Even Barbie wasn’t the Academy’s personal favorite film of the year, some members might feel that a Best Picture win is a consolation prize for the snubs. The sympathy vote goes a long way! And that’s especially true in the world of Hollywood politics.

Plus, no matter what the haters say, I maintain that Barbie is a great film that is more than deserving of the Oscar’s top prize. Gerwig and her co-writer, Noah Baumbach, managed to transform an infamous commercial property into a laugh-out-loud comedy, a heart-wrenching coming-of-age movie, an existential satire, and a self-aware capitalist commentary—all in a neat, watchable, under-two-hour package. Robbie delivered a completely singular performance as a doll who discovers her humanity, and Gosling brought down the house as a ridiculous—yet still sympathetic—parody of masculinity. The sets were next level, the costumes were Halloween-levels of iconic, and the “I’m Just Ken” musical number is an instant classic.

No offense to Oppenheimer, of course. Nolan and Murphy delivered a harrowing drama about the inherent evil of war and a man plagued by regret. But it’s Barbie and Oppenheimer, you know? If 2023 was the year of Barbenheimer, then Barbie deserves some Oscar love, too. Go ahead and give Nolan Best Director. Give Murphy Best Actor. Save Best Picture for Barbie. Everybody wins!