Our Oscars Preview - Best Picture [2026]

It's Oscars Week '26! With these preview articles, we're trying to pin point winners so that you do well in your Oscars prediction pool (a shameless plug for ours)... BUT we're also trying to read the tea leaves and give you concrete reasons for WHY you should make certain selections or steer clear of others. Maybe this our year to nail our predictions...

Here is Part 5 (the final one) of our preview.

One Battle After Another [2025]

Best Picture

Nominees

• Bugonia – Ed Guiney, Andrew Lowe, Yorgos Lanthimos, Emma Stone, and Lars Knudsen, producers (+10000)
• F1 – Chad Oman, Brad Pitt, Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner, Joseph Kosinski, and Jerry Bruckheimer, producers (+20000)
• Frankenstein – Guillermo del Toro, J. Miles Dale, and Scott Stuber, producers (+10000)
• Hamnet – Liza Marshall, Pippa Harris, Nicolas Gonda, Steven Spielberg, and Sam Mendes, producers (+2000)
• Marty Supreme – Eli Bush, Ronald Bronstein, Josh Safdie, Anthony Katagas, and Timothée Chalamet, producers (+4000)
• One Battle After Another – Adam Somner (p.n.), Sara Murphy, and Paul Thomas Anderson, producers (-500)
• The Secret Agent – Emilie Lesclaux, producer (+20000)
• Sentimental Value – Maria Ekerhovd and Andrea Berentsen Ottmar, producers (+6500)
• Sinners – Zinzi Coogler, Sev Ohanian, and Ryan Coogler, producers (+340)
• Train Dreams – Marissa McMahon, Teddy Schwarzman, Will Janowitz, Ashley Schlaifer, and Michael Heimler, producers (+10000)

Best Picture Tiers

F1 [2025]

Tier 3: Happy To Be Here

F1, The Secret Agent, Bugonia, Frankenstein, Train Dreams

Isaac: For the first time since 2023's Killers of the Flower Moon, Apple TV is back in the Best Picture category with F1! This movie might be the epitome of "happy to be here" but every year that we get a crowd-pleasing blockbuster in the mix, is a good year. Not to mention, Netflix finally gets to let out a deep breath after they shelled out some number in the high-teen millions of dollars to acquire Train Dreams out of Sundance. While it might not have been the most lucrative deal out of the rather calm year in Park City, Neon acquired Together for something like $17 million, it is one of the most rewarding. Earning a Best Picture nomination adds to the legacy of Sundance films breaking into the top category, most recent one being Past Lives in 2023, but there is still only one Sundance film that has won the award. CODA in 2021 stands alone, and after this year, I'm afraid it will remain that way. And of course we have the wonderful auteurs Yorgos Lanthimos and Guillermo del Toro in the mix, both netting their third Best Picture nomination. While del Toro is the one of the two filmmakers to win this award for The Shape of Water, both directors have been thriving lately and even though they are on the outside looking in, their consistency of craft should be commended. The real wild-card amongst the films here is Kleber Mendoça Filho's The Secret Agent. Technically, it could see some unexpected success on Oscar night, maybe a couple of upset wins for Wagner Moura in Best Actor and for the film in Best International, which would certainly boost its chances out of this tier. But sadly, I can't see it making it to the tippy top. All great films, however, and it is wonderful to see such a wide variety of stories represented for Best Picture!

Hamnet [2025]

Tier 2: So You're Saying There's a Chance?

Hamnet, Marty Supreme, Sentimental Value

Hopster: Even compared to the 'Happy to Be Here' nominees, making a semi-serious case for any of these three films in Tier 2 in this Best Picture race is still kind of silly. Just look at the odds! We're still talking about (+2000) at best for Hamnet, which is polling in a distant third. Putting aside the two frontrunners, these three films round out a very solid Top 5 Best Picture nominees, and in another year, one of them might have a fighter's chance to make some noise. Of these three films, they could still pull off some high-end wins on Oscar night. Best Actress for Jessie Buckley in Hamnet is a slam dunk, you can cash that ticket right now. Timothée Chalamet could certainly still win Best Actor, which might be the one award Marty Supreme secures. And Sentimental Value could win in a few places, like Stellan Skarsgård for Best Supporting Actor and/or Best International Feature Film. Here's the thing, when One Battle After Another and Sinners are duking it out for gold and silver, I feel confident saying any of those three films would make a worthy bronze. For me, the Acadmey Awards still maintain important cultural relevancy for me, in that they provide a snapshot of which films mattered in a given year. Sometimes they get the winner right, and sometimes they get it wrong. However, which films are selected to compete for Best Picture will continue to matter, especially those that might otherwise be lost to history if not for their Oscar nomination. So no, the "So You're Saying There's a Chance?" films in Tier 2 don't really have a serious chance at winning the top prize, but I'm still happy they're all here. Only at the movies do participation trophies count. Well, and in Little League athletics, I suppose.

Sinners [2025]

Tier 1: Heavyweight Contenders

One Battle After Another, Sinners

Hopster: Since we've been covering the Academy Awards here at Film & Froth, the Best Picture race has more often than not been... well, a bit anticlimatic. In our first year, 2021, Nomadland was a heavy favorite; in 2022, things were a little more interesting, when CODA upset The Power of the Dog; in 2023, Everything Everywhere All at Once cleaned up; in 2024, Oppenheimer did the same thing; and in 2025, Anora turned what was a close race into a blowout. Clicking back through our archives reminds me that the Best Picture race ebbs and flows, where more often than not, what is expected to happen actually happens. Every once in a while, a big surprise can happen, one that we either see coming or are completely blindsided by. The biggest surprise at the Oscars in the past 5 years is certainly CODA winning, but that I don't recall that race being necessarily... competitive. Cut to this year, and this awards season has been anything but competitive. One Battle After Another has been on a heater, winning the top prize at essentially every turn, including the Critics Choice, the Golden Globes, the BAFTAs, the National Board of Review, the DGAs (Directors Guild), the PGAs (Producers Guild), and some of the most prestigious film critics groups in the country. Despite Sinners' big wins at the Actor Awards, it has played second fiddle to OBAA this entire run. As of the time of writing this, One Battle After Another still holds (-500) odds for winning Best Picture, compared to (+340) for Sinners. I admittedly hadn't been tracking how close Vegas projecting this race prior to the Actor Awards, though I imagine the margins have slimmed considerably in the past few week or so. No matter how you slice it, OBBA is sitting pretty and comfortably in the driver's seat to win the top prize (in addition to other top-shelf prizes like Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Director).

Still, this race is probably closer than it has been since the start, and anyone not paying attention to the industry-wide support that Sinners clearly has, especially with its record-breaking 16(!) Oscar nominations is missing out. As someone who has been rooting for PTA to win big at the Academy Awards for my entire adult life, the thought of his coronation brings a smile to my face. However, as I'm considering my ballot for Sunday's show, I have to take a beat and recalculate one more time. Sometimes winning Best Picture isn't necessarily about awarding the best film of the year. At this level, we're really splitting hairs anyway. Sometimes winning Best Picture is about voters feeling good about their choice, for one reason or another. Can we somehow still coronate PTA but not give his film Best Picture? At the Academy Awards, that can certainly happen. I'm not a betting man (which is for the best, I'll admit), but at this point in time, I'm betting PTA gets his long-overdue and well-deserved flowers, but I think the Academy voters makes good on a near-century's worth of oversights and does the thing it often never does – which is, in this case, despite the odds and the unlikelihood, awarding Sinners Best Picture.

Sinners – Zinzi Coogler, Sev Ohanian, and Ryan Coogler, producers

Isaac: I'm going to take everything Hop just said and take it a different direction. I get the whole splitting hairs thing, and I, just like anybody else, think a Sinners win would be transcendent to witness. Yet, I'm sadly hesitant to pick it here based on the strength of winning both the PGA and DGA. Ten out of the last thirteen times that the PGA and DGA have matched, that film has gone on to win the top prize. The only outliers being, Parasite (1917 won both precursors), Moonlight (famously La La Land), and 12 Years a Slave (Gravity). While there really is something to say about 16 nominations, that just doesn't translate into success, especially for Best Picture. Since 2015, the film with the most nominations has won Best Picture only four times. I suppose you could argue that 50% of those have happened in the last three Oscars with Oppenheimer and Everything Everywhere All At Once, so maybe I'm being a little bit of a curmudgeon! Nevertheless, I have to go with my gut here, and I also need this to happen so I can lord it over Hop's head in the future as he's the biggest PTA fan I know. So give me One Battle After Another and let the record reflect my fandom for PTA has grown, while Hop's has shrunk. Your move pal!

One Battle After Another – Adam Somner (p.n.), Sara Murphy, and Paul Thomas Anderson, producers