Following terrible wildfires that ravaged the heart of the film industry in Los Angeles, a beleaguered Hollywood gathered around the Netflix narco-musical about trans identity Emilia Prez in Thursday’s Oscar nominations.
The Spanish-language, French-produced film Emilia Prez, directed by Jacques Audiard, dominated the nominations with a lead of 13 nominations, including best actress and best picture for Karla Sof a Gasc, who became the first openly trans performer to receive an Oscar nomination. Additionally, the movie received nominations for Zoe Salda, two of its songs, original script, and directing.
Despite its prominent position in Hollywood, Netflix has never taken home the best film award. Several of its leading candidates, such as Mank, The Irishman, and Roma, have received several nominations in the past but have only taken home a small number of trophies.
However, Emilia P. Rez might be its best opportunity to yet. With ten nominations, it surpassed Netflix’s own Roma to become the most nominated non-English language film ever. In the history of the Academy Awards, only three films have received more nominations: All About Eve, Titanic, and La La Land.
The popular Broadway version of another musical, Wicked, received almost as many nominations. Jon M. Chu’s extravagant Wizard of Oz riff garnered ten nominations, including acting and best picture honors for its stars, Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo.
Brady Corbet’s postwar epic, The Brutalist, which was shot in VistaVision and distributed by A24, also received a resounding ten nominations, including best director and best picture, as well as nominations for Adrien Brody, Guy Pearce, and Felicity Jones.
Anora, The Brutalist, A Complete Unknown, Conclave, Dune: Part Two, Emilia Prez, I’m Still Here, Nickel Boys, The Substance, and Wicked are the ten finalists for best picture.
The six most acclaimed films in a wide-open Oscar campaign performed as anticipated: Emilia Prez, Wicked, The Brutalist, Anora (six nominations), Conclave (eight nominations), and A Complete Unknown (eight nominations). The most unexpected films were RaMell Ross Nickel Boys, a boldly constructed first-person point-of-view drama that had been passed over by many guilds in previous voting, and I’m Still Here, a Brazilian film that depicts political resistance under Brazil’s military dictatorship and for which Fernanda Torres received a nomination for best actress.
Though those films all received nods elsewhere, those nominees probably displace several best-picture contenders in the prison drama Sing Sing, the journalism thriller September 5, and the heartwarming comedy A Real Pain.
The Apprentice, one of the boldest movies of 2024, received an unexpected two nominations for Jeremy Strong and Sebastian Stan. Under the guidance of lawyer Roy Cohn, the movie dramatizes the early years of President Donald Trump’s rise in New York real estate. Trump has referred to the people who worked on the movie as human slime.
Colman Domingo (Sing Sing), Ralph Fiennes (Conclave), and Timoth é Chalamet (A Complete Unknown) were the other nominees in the best actor category, which included Stan and Brody. Daniel Craig, who was praised for his distinctly non-James Bond performance in Queer, was most conspicuously absent.
Moore, Gasc, Torres, Erivo, and Anora star Mikey Madison were nominated for best actress, a category that Demi Moore seemed to have secured for her powerful performance in The Substance. Possibly the most competitive category of the year, it excluded Angelina Jolie (Maria), Nicole Kidman (Babygirl), Pamela Anderson (The Last Showgirl), and Marianne Jean-Baptiste (Hard Truths).
“I’m from Los Angeles, and I’m sad for L.A. because there has been so much destruction in the last few weeks, but it’s really lovely to see everyone coming together,” Madison remarked on Thursday. It’s truly lovely to see Hollywood uniting and honoring cinema at this time.
Coralie Fargeat, the director of The Substance, was able to break through the all-male cast of James Mangold (A Complete Unknown), Corbet, Audiard, and Sean Baker (Anora). The majority of people anticipated that Edward Berger would receive a nomination for directing the papal thriller Conclave.
Kieran Culkin, the Oscar frontrunner for his portrayal in A Real Pain, lead the supporting cast. Strong, Edward Norton (A Complete Unknown), Guy Pearce (The Brutalist), and Yura Borisov (Anora) were the other nominees. Grande, Salda, Jones, Monica Barbaro (A Complete Unknown), and Isabella Rossellini (Conclave) were nominated as supporting actresses.
Initially, the nominations were scheduled for January 17. However, the academy prolonged its voting period and twice delayed the publication of the candidates after wildfires broke out on January 7 and destroyed historic amounts of property in Altadena, the Pacific Palisades, and other parts of Los Angeles. As Bowen Yang and Rachel Sennott announced the nominations on Thursday, new fires outside of Los Angeles persisted.
Some in the film business demanded that the Academy cancel the Oscars because so many people were still in shock over the fires. Because of the ceremony’s economic impact on Los Angeles and as a testament to the industry’s resiliency, Academy leaders have advocated that it must take place on March 2. This year’s awards, according to the organizers, will honor those who heroically battled the flames and celebrate the work that brings the world’s cinema community together.
We will explore the recent occurrences while emphasizing the resilience, inventiveness, and hope that characterize Los Angeles and our sector. Yang and Academy CEO Bill Kramer said in an email sent to members on Wednesday.
However, a lot of the typical frothiness Because of the fires, Hollywood’s award season has been drastically shortened. The annual luncheon for nominees was canceled by the film academy. Other events have been rescheduled or scaled back. Kramer and Yang said on Wednesday that this year’s original song nominees would not be played. Conan O. Brien is hosting; the fires did not damage his Pacific Palisades house.
The Oscar nominations came after a turbulent year for Hollywood, which included widespread post-strike delays, large numbers of jobless workers as a result of a production slowdown in the whole industry, and the devastating January fires in California. The election that put Trump back in the White House, where podcaster Joe Rogan appeared to have more influence than all A-list celebrities combined, was probably the most humiliating.
At the same time, the industry came together in support of some inspiring films, such as Universal Pictures’ Wicked and three $1 billion grossers from the Walt Disney Co.: Inside Out 2, Deadpool and Wolverine, and Moana 2, which was first created as a series for Disney+. With the exception of Inside Out 2, which joined the top animated candidates of The Wild Robot, Flow, Memoir of a Snail, and Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, none of those movies were nominated on Thursday.
The nominees, which were dispersed among films that were both widely and barely known, released in theaters and mostly streamed, appeared to reflect the films’ ambiguous position.
However, there was no obvious front-runner for the industry’s highest award in the 2024 film year, unlike the previous year when Hollywood came together in support of Oppenheimer’s accomplishment. At least four or five films, including The Brutalist, Emilia Prez, Anora, Conclave, and Wicked, are viewed as having a chance at best picture with five weeks till the Oscar presentation.