Oscar Nomination Takeaways: Horror Surprises, Snubs, Voting Trends, and More.

As an MCU/DCU crossover between Thunderbolts* breakout Lewis Pullman and Peacemaker star Danielle Brooks went live at 5:30 A.M. local time on Thursday to announce the nominees for the 98th Academy Awards, there were quite a few surprises in store, even starting with the very first announcement of the night with Elle Fanning's nomination after missing the SAG nomination and BAFTA longlist. However, in that same category? Sinners' Wunmi Mosaku landed her first career Oscar nomination, while Amy Madigan, long-time Hollywood character actor, scored her first nomination since she starred opposite Gene Hackman and Ellen Burstyn in 1985's Twice in a Lifetime over four decades ago. Horror overperformance is one of many storylines coming out of nomination morning.

Sinners Overperformance: what can and can't win in March?

Sinners, as a film, was eligible to show up in seventeen of twenty-four categories at the 98th Academy Awards. The exceptions, of course, being Best Animated Feature Film, the three short film categories, Best International Feature, Best Documentary, and Best Adapted Screenplay. Sinners showed up in sixteen categories, breaking the record for most nominations that had been set in 1951 for All About Eve. To put into perspective how long it took something to top it, its star, Bette Davis, was still the biggest actress in Hollywood, the President of the United States was Harry Truman, and Willie Mays would win MLB's Rookie of the Year honors. A record that had stood the test of time was broken pretty easily by a period-piece vampire film that told its social commentary through musical numbers in a movie released early in the year. Its total seems to have been aided by the advent of the new casting category, one it's probably the odds-on-favorite to win considering its ensemble of character actors and the discovery of Miles Caton, whose Preacher Boy is arguably the heart of the film. However, in another era, it probably would've taken a nomination in both sound editing and sound design, which nowadays is merged into one singular category.

Sinners categories are Best Picture, Best Director for Ryan Coogler, Best Actor for Michael B. Jordan, Best Supporting Actress for Wunmi Mosaku, Best Supporting Actor for Delroy Lindo, Best Original Song for I Lied To You, Best Cinematography, Best Editing, Best Sound, Best Score, Best Original Screenplay, Best Casting, Best Costume Design, Best Makeup and Hairstyling, Best Production, and Best Visual Effects.

Michael B. Jordan is unlikely to win, in fact, he's probably fourth in terms of likelihood to win. However, Michael B. Jordan's performance might not be as adventurous in what the script allows him to do like Timothee Chalamet, Ethan Hawke, or Leonardo DiCaprio, but his performance is just as sturdy beneath its surface. Jordan has a romantic angle with two very different actresses while portraying two different characters, one of whom himself becomes a third character in the third act while turning into a vampire. The role requires an actor with enough authenticity that he needs to be a throwback to the period its in, as well as a vampire thrown into that period. Each role he's given has their own characterizations, motivations, and personalities that he has to balance, and while the soul of the movie may lay in its supporting cast, Jordan's performance is pure excellence in balancing a particular range. At no point does it feel like Michael B. Jordan's 'movie star' feel comes through to take away the fact that he's on-screen for quite literally the entirety of the picture. Jordan's first career nomination is overdue, but welcome, and doing so for an action-packed vampire period piece that has a lot to say about the cultural history of the United States that released in April is a miraculous, against-all-odds accomplishment for Jordan, who led the pack for a film that became an unlikely win for original blockbusters at the box office partly based on his star power.

Ryan Coogler, who has directed Jordan in other hit films such as Fruitvale Station, Creed, and Black Panther, has finally landed his elusive Best Director nomination. He is only the seventh black director to be nominated for Best Director, and none of them have won despite two of them, Barry Jenkins and Steve McQueen, having directed films that have taken home Best Picture. This doesn't seem like an award Coogler has any real shot at, however, with Paul Thomas Anderson's One Battle After Another being the darling this award season, crowning a career where he has yet to win an Oscar, despite regularly directing films that have found themselves in the cultural pantheon, such as Boogie Nights, There Will Be Blood, Punch Drunk Love, and Magnolia. Coogler is likely to take home a prize though as Sinners is the likely winner for Best Original Screenplay, with its primary competition for screenplay awards being nominated in Best Adapted instead.

Sinners should take home some technical nominations, too, but which wins remain to be seen as those aren't always as fluid to project. Production Design and Cinematography seem to be the standouts in this regard. The production design of Sinners makes it feel as if you're transported into the Jim Crow South, with the juke joint feeling so authentically gritty that it comes across as its own character with its own depth that adds its own layers to the film. The cinematography in a world of digital uses natural light and traditional film to make the film feel as raw as something that would have been made 30 years.

Is Sinners taking over for Best Picture? It still doesn't seem likely, considering it doesn't seem to be the top choice in most categories. Consider that one of the three movies that previously had been tied for the record of most nominations was Damien Chazelle's La La Land, which infamously lost Best Picture. Just a year ago, even, Emilia Perez led the pack with 13 nominations and only took home Best Supporting Actress for Zoe Saldana and Best Original Song. The most nominations don't necessarily correlate to most wins because the Academy has each branch vote for their nominees, and then have a second round of voting for the entire Academy. This simply means that Sinners was in everybody's top five, but might not have been anybody's number one choice. One Battle still seems to be winning everything, and it wasn't even that far behind Sinners on the nomination total, topping at 13.

Is an Awards Season Release Still Necessary?

As independent film company NEON, who took home Best Picture in 2019 for Parasite, has attempted to re-create their successes in the International Feature category, they had purchased four contenders internationally, while attempting to campaign all of them in Best Picture. To succeed, they used the rolling release strategy often found in awards season. Awards season, considering late-October to early January, produced the Best Picture winner every year in the 2010s. The strategy also saw last years winner in Anora, also distributed by NEON. However...

Sinners just set the record for most nominations in history while sporting an April release date, a month that was considered suicidal for a films Oscar hopes...until Everything Everywhere All at Once took home Best Picture after having an April release. The follow-up to Everything Everywhere All at Once? Nolan's Oppenheimer, a summer blockbuster that released in July and proceeded to dominant the Academy Awards. In a world where streaming releases keep everything in the public conscience significantly longer, angling a market-by-market release doesn't seem to be a significant advantage anymore, especially not enough to offset the drawbacks of those releases.

Not every movie is made or acquired strictly to be a box office juggernaut, as studios rely on critical acclaim as well to fill out their library. The problem is that these movies could theoretically make money, but aren't because the studios advertise 'in theaters now' when its only released in Manhattan and Los Angeles. As they slowly roll out the film to each market, people who had already looked to see if its playing in their area see that it isn't, and make the decision to wait for streaming. Not only does this hurt the box office, but it also hurts its awards chances because the fewer people that talk about the movie, the harder the film becomes to get in front of voters, especially when a studio is rolling out more than a handful of films with the same strategy at the same time, ultimately making the process of watching these movies feel more like homework than leisure.

That isn't the biggest reason that NEON underperformed, and films expected to compete for major nominations such as It Was Just an Accident and Sirat didn't do as well as planned, while No Other Choice found itself entirely shut out. The biggest reason is that NEON pitted its own movies against each other, so the campaign resources couldn't be adequetely divided. If anything, it's a studio that at best didn't trust what it had and at worst, was so egotistical that they assumed they couldn't lose.

But the pattern is clear: you can compete for Best Picture with a blockbuster release date in the modern Academy that has seen significant voter shift and trend changes since expanding its voting body at the start of the decade.

What Exactly Are Some of the New Trends?

It's hard to determine what is a trend and what anecdotally led to a series of coincidences with such small sample sizes, but there are a few fascinating takeaways this year that fall in line with newer happenings within the voting.

• 2026 marks the the third year in history, following an every-other-year-pattern, where all five nominees for Best Director scored a second nomination as a writer. Ryan Coogler (Sinners), Chloe Zhao (Hamnet), Joachim Trier (Sentimental Value), Paul Thomas Anderson (OBAA), and Josh Safdie (Marty Supreme). This happened for the first time in 2022. It's unclear if it's a voting body that appreciates authorship or that this trend comes from Hollywood greenlighting more auteur-driven prestige projects, but it is something that didn't happen for almost a century and is now becoming semi-common.

• The new voting body isn't afraid to nominate streaming exclusives. While all films eligible for the Academy Awards have a required theatrical run, most from streamers aren't as robust as an F1, which did find itself in Best Picture. But this year saw an Apple original and two Netflix films (Frankenstein, Train Dreams) make Best Picture. On top of that, the Academy nominated a Shudder original in Best Makeup as The Ugly Stepsister found itself named on Oscar nomination morning, despite not having a major distributor campaigning for it. The tide was shifting when CODA stunned for Best Picture a few years ago, but it's evident that the wave is now being ridden. Even something like KPop: Demon Hunters getting in at Best Animated Feature is unprecedented because it streamed before its qualifying theatrical exhibition.

• Precursor awards seemingly don't carry as much weight as they used to. In terms of CCA and the Golden Globes, both of whom share little-to-no overlap with the voters in the Academy, the actors who have seemed to benefit most in terms of momentum in recent years are Paul Giamatti, Demi Moore, Fernanda Torres, Jacob Elordi, and Wagner Moura, whose wins gave them televised speeches to solidify their Oscar status ahead of nomination voting. Take Adam Sandler, for example, who was nominated at both places for Jay Kelly. Up until a few years ago, appearing at both would all but secure Oscar nomination. Delroy Lindo was not nominated at either, but ended up getting the Oscar nomination over Sandler after he gave a speech during an awards win for his films. Even precursors that do have a lot of overlap with the Academy, Elle Fanning didn't get nomianted at SAG and though nominations have not come out, her absence on the BAFTA longlist confirms that she won't be nominated there, either. Then there's Ariana Grande and Paul Mescal who scored every single nomination they were eligible for ahead of the Academy Awards and did not have their name called on Thursday morning. However, the Academy loved Sentimental Value, and Fanning came along for the ride after the Academy took to Sentimental Value. It's now at a point year-over-year where these ceremonies can signal early momentum, but they can also create red herrings.

• Even with the more adventurous nominations, there's still a hint of the old guard, as noted by the Best Picture inclusion of F1, which is a throwback to the traditional Hollywood blockbuster, and the lead nominations for Ethan Hawke and Kate Hudson that prove show-business biopic bait from previous nominees can still reel something in.

• One recent trend that isn't necessarily reflected in today's voting, but could be something to keep tabs on in the second round of voting: Best Picture and Lead. Of Best Picture winners released in this decade, the CODA surprise is the only film to take Best Picture without having a lead actor attached. Frances McDormand got a third win out of nowhere, just a few years after her second win for Three Billboard Outside Ebbing Missouri, when Nomadland won Best Picture during the pandemic. Two years later, Michelle Yeoh upset Cate Blanchett who was looking to win her third during the EEAO craze, while the next year Cillian Murphy edged out Giamatti as Oppenheimer dropped a bomb on its competition. Last year, as previously mentioned, Anora won with Mikey Madison coming out on top over a red-hot Demi Moore campaign and late surge from Fernanda Torres. That said, this could just be pure coincidence rather than a pattern, especially considering it isn't very likely that DiCaprio will come along if OBAA takes Picture in 2026. Also of note: Troy Kotsur did win Best Supporting Actor when CODA won in 2021, so perhaps a win for, say, Sean Penn or Teyana Taylor, keeps the trend alive for at least an acting win for the Best Picture winner.

• Horror seems to be fair game. Outside of some wins in psychological horror such as Kathy Bates in Misery or the pairing of Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster in Silence of the Lambs, horror has never performed well historically at the Academy Awards. But last years Best Picture nomination for The Substance, a visceral body horror, went against the grain of tradition, and it's now been followed up by acting nominations for roles such as Aunt Gladys in Weapons. Horror seems to be fair game at the Academy Awards, and for the sake of article brevity, as this piece already has very little of it, Jameus and Ash will explore this topic more on the next episode of the 2:17 Horror podcast (ironically, named after Weapons) which can be found on our YouTube channel.

• One historical trend to keep an eye on: no film has ever won Best Picture while not being a profitable film at the box office. Sinners was one of the most successful original films of the last decade, and no matter how beloved of a picture One Battle was, it failed to turn a profit at the box office as it grossed only $206M on a $175M budget, which puts it in the red by approximately $100M when you account for marketing costs. Another historical trend to keep an eye on: One Battle won a combination of Director/Screenplay/Picture at the Globes, something only two films have ever done: La La Land and The Social Network. Both of those movies lost Best Picture at the Academy Awards. Even without the caveat of its losses, One Battle is winning so many awards that the only comparisons are films that suffered from frontrunner fatigue late in the season, prompting voters to award different films. Mix in those two precedents with the fact that it isn't guaranteed an acting win in front of a voting body that has attached an acting win to every single Best Picture winner so far this decade and also didn't lead in nominations today, OBAA may not be as safe a bet as originally anticipated come March. Is this award going to be determined by which of Taylor and Mosaku can win a wide open BSA race?

Is Emma Stone the Modern Meryl?

Katharine Hepburn holds the record for most acting wins in the Academy at four, but she didn't even get her second win until Guess Who's Coming to Dinner a full 34 years after her first win for Morning Glory in 1933. The only other actors with three acting wins: Jack Nicholson, Ingrid Bergman, Daniel Day-Lewis, Frances McDormand, Walter Brennan, and Meryl Streep. For what it's worth, Sean Penn does have a decent chance to win his third this year for what arguably was a career performance.

Bergman, Day-Lewis, Streep, McDormand were in their fifties when they won their third, Nicholson and Hepburne were in their sixties. Emma Stone isn't reaching three this year up against Jessie Buckley's force of a performance and being so close to her second win just two years ago for Poor Things. But with Stone's performances constantly getting better every outing, there's a real opportunity she reaches three at the youngest age ever, already finding herself competitive again at the age of 37. As of January 22nd, 2026, Emma Stone is the youngest actor to ever land seven Academy Award nominations, granted two of them as a producer and only five for acting (her wins for Poor Things and La La Land, plus nominations for The Favourite, Birdman: The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance, and now Bugonia). It begs the question: has Emma Stone entered Meryl Streep 'namecheck' territory?

With a win so recently, snubbing Stone for a newcomer such as Chase Infiniti, an actress with a comeback narrative such as Jennifer Lawrence for Die My Love, or even giving Tessa Thompson her long overdue Oscar nomination for Hedda in a year where her Creed co-star also finally broke through in the lead category of a history of snubs would've not only been somewhat acceptable, but not at all overly surprising when factoring in the fact that Stone didn't even try to campaign this season?

Not only did she get in for a sci-fi movie that the Academy historically wouldn't go for, or that her well-liked co-star who gave a phenomenal and didn't make it, she didn't even go onto the campaign trail. Streep is widely considered a shortlist greatest living actor for a reason, but how many of her 21 nominations edged out superior performances because of the name Meryl Streep? It's hard to feel like at least a handful (Music of the Heart, Florence Foster Jenkins, Julie & Julia, and Into the Woods immediately come to mind) of the nominations weren't exactly warranted. It's not like she gave a Kramer vs Kramer or Bridges of Madison County level performance every time out. I doubt (no pun intended, definitely a warranted nomination) that there weren't clear snubs that lost out in many of those years. For a voting body that historically will look for any reason not to vote for somebody after they win, Stone seems to be the exception to the rule that Streep was from The Deer Hunter to The Post.

The question going forward isn't if Stone is this years Academy darling, but if she can maintain the status. Ellen Burstyn, for example, was nominated five times from her first nomination with The Last Picture Show in 1971 to 1980 when she was nominated for Ressurection, in a run that also included a win in Best Actress for Martin Scorsese's Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore. It wasn't until Requiem For a Dream, a full 20 years after the nomination for Resurrection, that Burstyn found herself back at the Oscars after her brief time as an It-Girl. JLaw, one of Stone's direct contemporaries, found herself nominated four times from 2011 to 2016, including a win at only 23 for her role in Silver Linings Playbook. She has yet to receive her fifth nomination, despite being on the cusp for arguably some of the best work in her career in Causeway, No Hard Feelings, and now Die My Love in the last four years. The actress that played Stone's mother in Crazy Stupid Love, Julianne Moore, had been nominated four times from 1997 to 2002, and didn't receive her final nomination, and win, until twelve years later. She has not been back, despite doing work that has gotten her in at every precursor, and one of the finest performances of the decade in May December. There are dozens of examples of a hot actor riding a wave across a certain stretch and then not finding their way back. Oscar nominations aren't as easy to come by as actors sometimes make it look.

But the positives that make Emma Stone different:

• She does seem to be giving an even better performance in every film she does, which is rare, and unfathomable.

• Emma Stone is one of Hollywood's budding producers, and she owns her own production company. If Stone wants to be in a movie, she can get it greenlit 99 times out of 100, which is rare for even the biggest of movie stars. This also means she has the ultimate pick of the litter when it comes to material.

• The previous point allows her to always have material she can stick her teeth into. Being able to pick your projects because you're a strong actor who's earned it doesn't always pay off. Being a skilled actor is just as much knowing what material will resonate at a particular period in time, and nobody in Hollywood understands that more right now than Emma Stone.

It remains to be seen just how many nominations Stone will rack up, but it doesn't seem to be slowing down any time soon, and it's something to keep an eye on going forward.

What were the Major Snubs?

In our final part of the overlook on the Academy Awards, the snub section is always something that commands quite a bit of conversation every year. A snub should be considered something that realistically had a shot, but was left behind in favor of something else. That's not really how it's used in the context of the internet, however. Though, there are a few:

• Hamnet found its way to Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, and scored a screenplay nomination. But even on its worst day, experts and pundits had it landing nominations for Cinematography, Editing, and Best Supporting Actor. It missed all three, proving maybe the film is a bit weaker than expected. Paul Mescal is the biggest snub of the day after giving such a tantalizing performance in a fictitious story of William Shakespeare coping with the loss of his child. The spot went to Delroy Lindo after Mescal showed up in every precursor and Lindo showed up in none of them. Mescal has previously been nominated, scoring a lead actor nomination for Aftersun, but is also coming off of Gladiator II where he was an early frontrunner who missed on Oscar morning.

• Wicked: For Good scored zero nominations a year after its predecessor landed ten, with two Oscar wins. After seeing a dismal box office relative to expectation and low critic recption, it wasn't likely to go far, but even on its worst day, it had tech nom expectations. It makes sense that it did not get it, however, as the film was shot as one production and then divided up into two parts. The production crew received their flowers last year for their work on this movie. That leaves Ariana Grande as a major snub, though it's hard to argue that she should have ever been in the running in the first place. The performance is a lead role campaigning in supporting for a character she has played before, and in terms of quality of performance, it wasn't better than any other actor getting buzz. Her Golden Globes and Critics Choice nominees likely stem from the expanded fields and the desire those voting bodies have to nominate A-List talent to attract them to the event. If Grande is as good as people hope she is, she'll be back eventually, but there might be a reason her entire filmography leaves a lot to be desired outside of the one role where she's essentially playing herself and a character she has been wanting to play since she was a young girl.

• Marty Supreme did not make Score, despite getting everything it was in the running for outside of Supporting Actress for Odessa A'Zion. This probably just says that the music branch is still apprehensive to nominate digital scores more than anything else. Too much thought shouldn't be put into the snub.

• The goose egg lied by No Other Choice partially has to do with NEON's capabilities, or lack thereof, when it comes to campaigning for four international films. That said, one has to wonder if one of the biggest darlings of the season to this point struggled at the Oscars because of Park Chan-wook's decision to scab during the WGA's strike a few years ago.

• Chainsaw Man did not make Animated Feature despite a groundswell for it. While anime is clearly becoming more respected, it's hard to nominate a film that's an extension of an established television program.

• Not a single superhero film made Best VFX, despite state-of-the-art visual effects from Superman, Thunderbolts*, and Fantastic Four in 2025. Has the superhero fatigue gone all the way to the effects branch at the Academy?

• Notable movies that didn't show up: Hedda, No Other Choice, Superman, Wicked: For Good, Die My Love, Is This Thing On?, The Testament of Ann Lee, Sorry Baby, After the Hunt, Wake Up Dead Man, Rental Family, The Life of Chuck, Caught Stealing, Mickey 17, Nouvelle Vague, Jay Kelly.

Final Oscar nominations:

Best Picture: Sinners, One Battle After Another, Train Dreams, Sentimental Value, Hamnet, F1, The Secret Agent, Bugonia, Marty Supreme, Frankenstein.

Best Actress: Renate Reinsve (Sentimental Value), Kate Hudson (Song Sung Blue), Jessie Buckley (Hamnet), Emma Stone (Bugonia), and Rose Byrne (If I Had Legs I'd Kick You).

Best Actor: Ethan Hawke (Blue Moon), Leonardo DiCaprio (One Battle After Another), Michael B. Jordan (Sinners), Wagner Moura (The Secret Agent), Timothee Chalamet (Marty Supreme).

Best Supporting Actress: Wunmi Mosaku (Sinners), Inga Ibsdotter-lilleas (Sentimental Value), Elle Fanning (Sentimental Value), Amy Madigan (Weapons), and Teyana Taylor (One Battle After Another).

Best Supporting Actor: Sean Penn (One Battle After Another), Benicio Del Toro (One Battle After Another), Delroy Lindo (Sinners), Jacob Elordi (Frankenstein), and Stellen Skarsgaard (Sentimental Value).

Best Director: Ryan Coogler (Sinners), Paul Thomas Anderson (One Battle After Another), Chloe Zhao (Hamnet), Josh Safdie (Marty Supreme), and Joachim Trier (Sentimental Value).

Best Adapted Screenplay: Frankenstein, Hamnet, Bugonia, One Battle After Another, and Train Dreams.

Best Original Screenplay: It Was Just an Accident, Blue Moon, Sinners, Sentimental Value, and Marty Supreme.

Best International Feature Film: Sentimental Value, The Secret Agent, It Was Just an Accident, The Voice of Hind Rajab, and Sirat.

Best Documentary Feature Film: Come See Me in the Good LIght, Cutting Through Rocks, Mr. Nobody Against Putin, The Perfect Neighbor, and The Alabama Solution.

Best Animated Feature Film: Elio, KPop: Demon Hunters, Arco, Little Amelie and the Character of Rain, and Zootopia 2.

Best Live Action Short Film: Two People Exchanging Saliva, The Singers, A Friend of Dorothy, Butcher's Stain, and Jane Austen's Period Drama.

Best Animated Short Film: Retirement Plan, The Girl Who Cried Pearls, Butterfly, Forevergreen, and The Three Sisters.

Best Documentary Short Film: The Devil is Busy, Armed Only with a Camera: The Life and Death of Brent Renaud, All the Empty Rooms, Perfectly a Strangeness, and Child No More: Were and Are Gone.

Best Film Editing: Marty Supreme, Sentimental Value, F1, Sinners, and One Battle After Another.

Best Cinematography: Train Dreams, One Battle After Another, Marty Supreme, Sinners, and Frankenstein.

Best Casting: The Secret Agent, Sinners, Hamnet, Marty Supreme, and One Battle After Another.

Best Costume Design: Hamnet, Sinners, Avatar: Fire and Ash, Marty Supreme, and Frankenstein.

Best Production Design: One Battle After Another, Sinners, Hamnet, Marty Supreme, and Frankenstein.

Best Makeup and Hairstyling: The Ugly Stepsister, Sinners, The Smashing Machine, Kokuho, and Frankenstein.

Best Visual Effects: F1, The Lost Bus, Avatar: Fire and Ash, Sinners, and Jurassic World Rebirth.

Best Sound: Sirat, Sinners, F1, One Battle After Another, and Frankenstein.

Best Original Score: Sinners, Bugonia, Hamnet, Frankenstein, and One Battle After Another.

Best Original Song: Dear Me (Diane Warren: Relentess), Golden (KPop: Demon Hunters), Train Dreams (Train Dreams), I Lied to You (Sinners), and Sweet Dreams of Joy (Viva Verdi!).

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Photo credit: Warner Brothers Studios.