For our final update of the 2025 contenders season, all outstanding productions have been moved to stage 5 and we can now look at the overall strength of our model and how certain productions fared in the final race.

Let’s start with our final rankings of the top contenders in each of our four categories. To make it easier to identify Oscar nominees, we’ve wrapped them in bold.

Before digging too deep, there are a couple of little caveats things about a handful of placements as well as discuss a move that needs to be occur. The Lost Bus, The Smashing Machine, and The Voice of Hind Rajab were all listed in the Limited category. All three were Oscar nominees but for the first two, Lost Bus and Smashing Machine, those nominations came in craft categories only so they did not make any major nominations. Voice of Hind Rajab was only nominated in International Feature and that category has differing eligibility rules so it might be a touch unfair to compare its performance in the Limited field as a nominee. Then there’s F1. We all knew it was going to make a couple of nominations in craft categories but it managed to show up in Best Picture as well, meaning it was ostensibly a Wide player rather than a limited one.

If we were to have moved Lost Bus and Smashing Machine to Craft and F1 to Wide, their final scores would be different. In The Lost Bus case, the score shifts from 76.0 to 74.1. That would have inserted it into the 3rd position (if no other changes were made) leaving behind its 18th berth. For Smashing Machine, that’s 70 to 67.7, which is 9th place with no other changes and a 25th placement in Limited. Finally, F1 goes from 74.9 to 76.8. And that’s a 7th place finish from 2nd in Craft.

Best of Wide

There were a total of twenty films that fell into the Wide category and here are they are ranked from the best to worst:

1. (85.7 / 100) – The Testament of Ann Lee (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
2. (85.4 / 100) – Hamnet (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
3. (84.3 / 100) – Train Dreams (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
4. (83.3 / 100) – Frankenstein (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
5. (81.7 / 100) – Sinners (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
6. (80.9 / 100) – Nouvelle Vague (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
7. (76 / 100) – Blue Moon (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
8. (72.1 / 100) – Mickey 17 (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
9. (71.8 / 100) – Nuremberg (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
10. (70.8 / 100) – The Phoenician Scheme (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
11. (70 / 100) – Eternity (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
12. (70 / 100) – Hedda (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
13. (69 / 100) – The History of Sound (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
14. (68.3 / 100) – Dead Man’s Wire (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
15. (66.9 / 100) – Wicked: For Good (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
16. (63.2 / 100) – Kiss of the Spider Woman (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
17. (62.8 / 100) – Grand Tour (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
18. (61.4 / 100) – Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
19. (60.4 / 100) – On Swift Horses (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
20. (48.6 / 100) – Atropia (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)

Of the twenty films that were in the Wide competition, only five made it to Oscar nominations. Those five populated the top 7 (or six of the top 8 if you include F1), which is a pretty solid result. Only two films inserted themselves into this grouping, including the number one finisher The Testament of Ann Lee (the other being Nouvelle Vague). Blue Moon was the weakest of these with F1 in the competition just barely outpacing.

The question is what of the two who “should” have been nominated by the model and why did the two lower ranked features not perform as well as we might have thought?

For The Testament of Ann Lee, the pedigree and content ratings were higher than the others while the lower critical and audience responses suggest a more fitting result. For the pedigree perspective, this is a judgment call. With Mona Fastvold, Brady Corbet, and Daniel Blumberg being recent nominees, the expiry factor of 10 seemed appropriate but Seyfried, who was the most likely nominee of the film, hadn’t been nominated since 2020, which should have docked a few points. Further, I shouldn’t have given equal weight to the film directed by Mona Fastvold when she didn’t direct the film that earned the aforementioned three their nominations. As such, an adjustment downward of both of those factors in pedigree would have helped. As for the content, what might have made all the difference was it being described as a drama rather than a musical. Although it wasn’t a musical in the traditional sense, I believe that with the songs and dancing involved, it would have hurt the film’s chances a bit, especially how that all was used and it would certainly have pulled down its overall rating.

The only complaint about Nouvelle Vague would be the its release strategy rating, something that can’t really be adjusted easily. That said, it’s probably the underperformance in the list of Blue Moon and F1 that need to be addressed rather than the Vague‘s success.

For Blue Moon, which like Vague was directed by Richard Linklater, the issue was not assigning the same pedigree factor. Not only did Blue Moon have more past Oscar nominees in the cast and crew but they were all of the same expiry factor (2014). Yet, for some reason I gave Vague a higher rating in both expiry and pedigree, so its slight was definitely procedural rather than a failing of the model.

Lastly, there’s F1, which is a special case. It was the 2nd highest rated Craft contender but would have come in slightly above Blue Moon in the ranking. That said, looking over the various factors, I can’t see anywhere that it could have been adjusted appropriately. What this leads me to believe is that the Wide category is fairly solid right now and other than some individual rating adjustments done on the subjective end, they could have very well fallen perfectly in line as needed.

Best of Limited

For the Limited category, we had 46 titles. Here they are ranked:

1. (85.6 / 100) – No Other Choice (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
2. (85.5 / 100) – Wake Up Dead Man (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
3. (84.3 / 100) – Sentimental Value (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
4. (84.2 / 100) – The Secret Agent (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
5. (83.6 / 100) – One Battle After Another (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
6. (81.4 / 100) – It Was Just an Accident (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
7. (81.1 / 100) – Marty Supreme (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
8. (80.4 / 100) – Bugonia (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
9. (78.9 / 100) – Is This Thing On? (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
10. (78.6 / 100) – Jay Kelly (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
11. (77.8 / 100) – Rental Family (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
12. (77.6 / 100) – A House of Dynamite (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
13. (76.7 / 100) – If I Had Legs, I’d Kick You (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
14. (76.6 / 100) – Father Mother Sister Brother (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
15. (76.5 / 100) – Weapons (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
16. (76.5 / 100) – Highest 2 Lowest (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
17. (76.2 / 100) – The Ballad of Wallis Island (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
18. (76 / 100) – The Lost Bus (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
19. (75.2 / 100) – Roofman (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
20. (74.7 / 100) – Final Destination: Bloodlines (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
21. (74.2 / 100) – Warfare (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
22. (73.1 / 100) – Sirât (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
23. (72.5 / 100) – Twinless (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
24. (71.2 / 100) – The Life of Chuck (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
25. (70 / 100) – The Smashing Machine (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
26. (69.7 / 100) – 28 Years Later (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
27. (69.3 / 100) – The Voice of Hind Rajab (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
28. (69.1 / 100) – Song Sung Blue (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
29. (69.1 / 100) – My Dead Friend Zoe (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
30. (68.8 / 100) – La Grazia (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
31. (68.1 / 100) – Die, My Love (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
32. (67.5 / 100) – The Housemaid (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
33. (67.2 / 100) – Bob Trevino Likes It (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
34. (66.8 / 100) – Good Fortune (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
35. (66.1 / 100) – Caught Stealing (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
36. (64.4 / 100) – The Roses (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
37. (63.2 / 100) – Rosemead (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
38. (62.8 / 100) – Dreams (Sex Love) (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
39. (62.3 / 100) – April (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
40. (62.1 / 100) – Ballad of a Small Player (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
41. (61.4 / 100) – The Shrouds (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
42. (60.4 / 100) – Eleanor the Great (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
43. (57 / 100) – Anemone (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
44. (51.6 / 100) – After the Hunt (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
45. (47.2 / 100) – A Big Bold Beautiful Journey (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
46. (45.8 / 100) – Ella McCay (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)

Here, the disparity in positioning was rather broad. No Other Choice and Wake Up Dead Man overperformed their placement while If I Had Legs I’d Kick You and Weapons underperformed. There’s also the placement of The Lost Bus, The Smashing Machine, and The Voice of Hind Rajab that create a vast failing in this competition. Those we’ve discussed above and I’m going to remove them from the discussion since as Limited contenders, none of them placed where we though they might, which means the model was accurate in terms of their placement in above-the-line categories.

Taking those out, we have a much narrower grouping to look at with all the Oscar nominees showing up between positions 3 and 15: 8 of the top 15 titles in the Limited race were in the right region.

I’m going into less detail with this section because I think it’s easy to assign “blame” to some of the placement. No Other Choice was a critically acclaimed film that was showing up in all sorts of unexpected places and there was some surprise that it didn’t get anything at all, not even a screenwriting nomination. Release Strategy might have been poorly weighted here as may have audience reception as those were the two areas the film excelled. However, I can’t say that the model was sensationally wrong there.

Wake Up Dead Man may well be a special case. Based on history alone, a screenwriting nomination seemed like a certainty but little else was in contention so its position as a limited contender might have allowed it to outperform what it really should have been. Like No Other Choice, it the release strategy came in clutch and that might well be the place to make adjustments for next year.

The next six films on the list all scored well and were almost all Best Picture nominees (only It Was Just an Accident wasn’t). From a logistical standpoint, these results fit.

There’s a huge four-place gap before If I Had Legs I’d Kick You arrives. Here, the defining factor was an atypically low release strategy score. Because of its early release, it got a fairly anemic rating. That seems to be a pattern for the discrepancies so far for this category.

Two positions below that is Weapons. Like If I Had Legs, the film picked up a single nomination in acting. That makes it a bit of an outlier. Once again the release strategy rating was lower than those around it, suggesting that were that given a bigger boost, it might have better performed. Beyond that, there’s not a lot in the rating that wouldn’t have made a difference.

That brings us to Song Sung Blue, which scored a Best Actress nomination despite the film failing in nearly every prediction factor. There is really no way to account for a film like this other than the whisper campaign factor, which cannot be easily adjusted for. As such, I’m not going to concern myself too much with this particular outlier.

Having said all that, with the release strategy overperforming in some places and underperforming in others, it appears something with that rating factor needs to be adjusted whether that’s a date rating adjustment (as in early releases aren’t being forgotten at nearly the clip that they used to) or that the factor itself needs to be tweaked down a bit. A combination of both might be worth consideration.

Best of Craft

The Craft category featured only 17 contenders, here ranked best to worst.

1. (75.4 / 100) – Thunderbolts* (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
2. (74.9 / 100) – F1 (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
3. (73.1 / 100) – Superman (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
4. (72.9 / 100) – The Fantastic Four: First Steps (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
5. (72.4 / 100) – Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
6. (72.2 / 100) – Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
7. (71.5 / 100) – Kokuho (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
8. (69.9 / 100) – How to Train Your Dragon (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
9. (65.2 / 100) – The Running Man (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
10. (64.9 / 100) – The Legend of Ochi (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
11. (64.9 / 100) – Avatar: Fire and Ash (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
12. (60.8 / 100) – The Ugly Stepsister (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
13. (60.6 / 100) – Jurassic World Rebirth (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
14. (59.7 / 100) – Tron: Ares (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
15. (53.1 / 100) – Diane Warren: Relentless (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
16. (50 / 100) – Wolf Man (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
17. (49.5 / 100) – William Tell (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)

Of the four categories, this is the one that seems to have been the farthest off. Only two of the top ten finishers were Oscar nominees. F1 (discussed above) and Kokuho. The remaining four nominees ewre tightly grouped in positions 11 through 15 with only Tron: Ares sticking its nose in. I’m going to toss out Diane Warren: Relentless. Although Original Song is technically a craft category, its nomination has more to do with the songwriter than any other factor. As such, an improvement on the pedigree factor might be in order.

For the most part, the big difference may well be the content/genre factors. Kokuho, The Ugly Stepsister, and Diane Warren: Relentless all had notably low scores. Then the highest scores were clustered towards the top. Since Craft relies heavily on certain genres, that may well be the reason those numbers are lower since most of the top titles are effects-heavy while the three of these titles were not.

Avatar: Fire and Ash was positioned fairly low but should have been higher and that’s a pedigree issue. With that pedigree, it should have had a higher score than 8. That, however, is subjective and thus difficult to asses.

There isn’t much that would have resolved some of these issues and the Craft category might well struggle year over year. I’m going to do a pass over the genre ratings. I may consider (not this year but a future year) a drama/comedy item then having the other two genres have their own ratings. That said, I don’t know that would have factored here. Ultimately, the genre ratings and perhaps an adjustment to the my own lenience with pedigree score applications.

Best of Animation

Finally, we have the Animation category with 13 contenders ranked.

1. (77.6 / 100) – Zootopia 2 (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
2. (73.7 / 100) – Little Amélie or the Character of Rain (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
3. (72.9 / 100) – KPop Demon Hunters (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
4. (70.3 / 100) – Elio (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
5. (69.8 / 100) – The Bad Guys 2 (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
6. (68.5 / 100) – Demon Slayer -Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle- (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
7. (68.3 / 100) – Arco (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
8. (68.1 / 100) – In Your Dreams (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
9. (60.1 / 100) – Scarlet (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
10. (59.6 / 100) – Endless Cookie (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
11. (59.4 / 100) – Dog Man (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
12. (56.9 / 100) – A Magnificent Life (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
13. (54.8 / 100) – The Twits (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)

This was by far the most accurate set of results of the four categories. The top 4 on the list were all Oscar nominees while the fifth fell in a distant 7th.

That film, Arco, may have been on the cusp of a nomination and outside factors may have pulled it into that citation, but the only drastic difference between it and the titles above it is its dismal audience score. Since audience is the second-highest rated factor for animated films, the audience score could be a factor.

That said, the two films that came in before it had detrimental factors to their citations. Bad Guys 2 had the ignominious distinction of not having its predecessor nominated, something this category requires of its sequels. Demon Slayer is based on a TV series, which is also a detrimental factor. That said, Bad Guys 2 was bolstered by a high pedigree factor while Demon Slayer was bolstered by a high audience factor. The content/genre factors for both films were also higher than Arco‘s. Bad Guys‘ pedigree issue is subjective and can be adjusted normally.

The audience elements of both Arco and Demon Slayer require a different solution. Both were well regarded by critics, so a reduction in the weight of the audience perception of the film might make sense but ultimately, the next biggest discrepancy between the two is genre ratings and the determining factor there may be that an R rating, in all other Oscar categories, is a sign of a stronger profile but for animation, it’s not. Although Content/Genre is the lowest factor already for Best Animated Feature, it might be best to reduce its weight slightly.

Final Comments

And that’s all there is to say about this year’s competition. The model performed fairly well with a few mitigating factors which I discussed above. I’ll be making a few adjustments before we post our first new contenders for this year. More about that on Thursday!