It’s pitch black where I am right now, and the only traffic on the road is actually moving–a good deal of it being autonomous vehicles that may or may not be carrying passengers. Those that were occupied were probably en route to the Samuel Goldwyn Theatre in Beverly Hills for a ritual that few here look forward to but the world seems to anticpate–the official announcement of Oscar nominations. For decades it has been mandated that it’s to occur in the final half-hour of the live East Coast feed of GOOD MORNING, AMERICA, ABC’s supposed commitment to its long-standing association with carrying the awards. One can only hope in the You Tube era maybe the thought of forcing the rest of the world to order extra strong Starbucks and tolerate the overly enthusiastic whoop-whoopers in the live audience who clearly were partying all night prior to this and perhaps do it at a more appropriate time is a possibility.
Based upon the choices we actually got, given all of the precedents already laid down by the Golden Globes et al, one didn’t need Polymarket to help his make the predictions. So much of this was practically predictable it was hard not to notice the overwhelming number of Brazilians and bots that were flooding the YouTube chat with flags of Palestine, Ukraine and yep, Brazil. NBC NEWS’ Saba Hamedy and Daniel Arkin were among those posting real-time updates with the dexterity of a stenographer. Here’s what they was able to provide, formatted and all:
Best supporting actor nominees
Benicio Del Toro, “One Battle After Another”
Jacob Elordi, “Frankenstein”
Delroy Lindo, “Sinners”
Sean Penn, “One Battle After Another”
Stellan Skarsgard, “Sentimental Value
Best original screenplay nominees
“Blue Moon”
“It Was Just an Accident”
“Marty Supreme”
“Sentimental Value”
“Sinners”
Best adapted screenplay nominees
“Bugonia”
“Frankenstein”
“Hamnet”
“One Battle After Another”
“Train Dreams”
Best animated short film nominees
“Butterfly”
“Forevergreen”
“The Girl Who Cried Pearls”
“Retirement Plan”
“The Three Sisters”
“Butcher’s Stain”
“A Friend of Dorothy”
“Jane Austen’s Period Drama”
“The Singers”
“Two People Exchanging Saliva”
Best original score nominees
“Frankenstein”
“Hamnet”
“One Battle After Another”
“Sinners”
Best make-up and hairstyling nominees
“Frankenstein”
“Kokuho”
“Sinners”
“The Smashing Machine”
“The Ugly Stepsister”
Best supporting actress nominees
Elle Fanning, “Sentimental Value”
Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, “Sentimental Value”
Amy Madigan, “Weapons”
Wunmi Mosaku, “Sinners”
Teyana Taylor, “One Battle After Another”
Best documentary short film nominees
“All the Empty Rooms”
“Armed Only with a Camera”
“Children No More”
“The Devil is Busy”
“Perfectly a Strangeness
Best documentary nominees
“The Alabama Solution”
“Come See Me In the Good Light”
“Cutting Through Rocks”
“Mr Nobody Against Putin”
“The Perfect Neighbor”
Best original song nominees
“Diane Warren: Relentless”
“KPop Demon Hunters”
“Sinners”
“Viva Verdi!”
“Train Drerams”
Best costume design nominees
“Avatar: Fire and Ash”
“Frankenstein”
“Hamnet”
“Marty Supreme”
“Sinners”
“Hamnet”
“Marty Supreme”
“One Battle After Another”
“The Secret Agent”
“Sinners”
Best visual effects nominees
“F1”
“Jurassic World: Rebirth”
“The Lost Bus”
“Sinners”
“F1”
“Frankenstein”
“One Battle After Another”
“Sinners”
“Sirât”
“Frankenstein”
“Hamnet”
“Marty Supreme”
“One Battle After Another”
“Sinners”
“Marty Supreme”
“One Battle After Another”
“Sentimental Value”
“Sinners”
Best international feature film nominees
“The Secret Agent” (Brazil)
“It Was Just an Accident” (France)
“Sentimental value” (Norway)
“Sirât” (Spain)
“The Voice of Hind Rajab” (Tunisia)
Best animated feature nominees
“Arco”
“Elio”
“KPop Demon Hunters”
“Little Amelie”
“Zootopia 2”
Best directing nomine(e)s
Chloe Zhao, “Hamnet”
Josh Safdie, “Marty Supreme”
Paul Thomas Anderson, “One Battle After Another”
Joachim Trier, “Sentimental Value”
Ryan Coogler, “Sinners”
Best actress nominees
Jessie Buckley, “Hamnet”
Rose Byrne, “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You”
Kate Hudson, “Song Sung Blue”
Renate Reinsve, “Sentimental Value”
Emma Stone, “Bugonia”
Leonardo DiCaprio, “One Battle After Another”
Ethan Hawke, “Blue Moon”
Michael B. Jordan, “Sinners”
Wagner Moura, “The Secret Agent”
Best cinematography
“Frankenstein”
“Marty Supreme”
“One Battle After Another”
“Sinners”
“Train Dreams”
Best picture nominees
“F1”
“Frankenstein”
“Hamnet”
“Marty Supreme”
“One Battle After Another”
“The Secret Agent”
“Sentimental Value”
“Sinners”
“Train Dreams”
When the dust finally settled and the first thin wisps of daybreak began to approach it was only then we began to realize how much better it might have been for us to stay in bed. VANITY FAIR provided almost instantaneous analysis:
(A)fter months of speculation and predictions and chatter, Ryan Coogler’s Sinners has emerged as the belle of the ball. His auteur-driven vampire flick just got a staggering 16 Oscar nominations, breaking the record for most nods ever received by a single film. (That title previously belonged to a trio of films that each got 14 noominations: All About Eve, Titanic, and La La Land.)
Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another, the film previously believed to be this year’s best picture frontrunner, is nipping at Sinners’s heels with 12 nominations of its own. Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value, a sentimental favorite from Norway, nabbed nine, while Josh Safdie’s Marty Supreme—home of likely best actor winner Timothée Chalamet—got eight nods.
PEOPLE’s Tommy McArdle added his own insights on a coupla of non-noms that perhaps provided the only eye-roll of the morning:
Wicked: For Good costars Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo were not included in the 2026 Oscar nominations for Best Supporting Actress and Best Actress, respectively…Both actresses were nominated last year for their performances in Wicked. Erivo’s snub comes after she did not receive nominations for her work in Wicked: For Good at January’s Critics Choice Awards, where Grande was also nominated. Both Erivo and Grande were nominated for their performances at the Golden Globe Awards.
But hence is the crux of all of this. While the Oscars may still be the perceived ultimate prize, awards season in toto has already set the bar for expectations to a level that we can get all of this detailed post-mortem in mere minutes, and no, it’s not just technology making it possible. There was more than enough precedent and predictive modeling to make this exercise essentially a rubber-stamp. Not to diminish the overt enthusiasm from the extraordinarily vocal SINNERS camp too much, but there was likely a darn good reason so many of them showed up en masse. Like they had every reason to expect this. One can only hope they shared some of those Waymos.
And with that, I’m gonna grab a nap. See you on March 15th.
Until next time…