As I look over the results of the 2024 Contenders series, I’m struck by the sheer breadth of contenders that were offered up throughout the year. It was startling just how many films met the stringent guidelines for inclusion and also how many of them failed to live up to lofty Oscar-caliber aspirations. It’s also interesting to note how several prominent early contenders collapsed upon release. It also must be noted that as of the time of writing this article, 15 films were still in various stages of limited release. That makes assessing their final chances difficult to be sure. However, we’ll do our best to figure out where the model worked and where it failed.

Before we dig into the bones of the various categories, I’ve updated every film’s page that had not yet reached Stage 5. While those 15 are still in limited release, I think we can draw conclusions anyway and see how things stand at this juncture since most of their box office tidings will have been reaped at this juncture.

Moving to Stage 4

If a film has surpassed a month in release, it is eligible for a move to Stage 4, but must first have already completed Stage 3 as well, so a lot of films stay in Stage 3 for a relatively long period of time while others move to Stage 4 rather quickly. We have only 15 films that have arrived in Stage 4 or still remain there.

All We Imagine as Light (Stage 4 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
Anora (Stage 4 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
The Brutalist (Stage 4 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
A Complete Unknown (Stage 4 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
Flow (Stage 4 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
The Girl with the Needle (Stage 4 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
Hundreds of Beavers (Stage 4 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
The Last Showgirl (Stage 4 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
Moana 2 (Stage 4 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
Mufasa: The Lion King (Stage 4 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
Nickel Boys (Stage 4 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
The Room Next Door (Stage 4 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
The Substance (Stage 4 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
Vermiglio (Stage 4 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
Wicked (Stage 4 of 5; Pending Eligibility)

Moving to Stage 5

Stage 5 is the final stage before the critics, guilds, and other organizations start handing out awards. This will be the final stage all of our films will reach prior to December (at the earliest). This means they have fully completed their box office runs.

Twenty-eight films have moved into Stage 5. They are below:

Armand (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
Babygirl (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
Better Man (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
Blitz (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
La Cocina (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
Conclave (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
The Fire Inside (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
Girls Will Be Girls (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
Gladiator II (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
Hard Truths (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
The Idea of You (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
Kraven the Hunter (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
Maria (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
Memoir of a Snail (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
Nightbitch (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
Nosferatu (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
Oh Canada (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
The Outrun (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
A Real Pain (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
The Seed of the Sacred Fig (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
September 5 (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
The Six Triple Eight (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
Small Things Like These (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
Transformers One (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
Venom: The Last Dance (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
We Live in Time (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
The Wild Robot (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)

Now that we’ve moved a lot of films around, let’s look at the positions of contenders in the seven areas we tackle. I will break them out in ranked order but by category as Oscar nominees, Oscar nominees that don’t fit their area, or non-Oscar nominees. I also want to move around a couple of films that very clearly didn’t live up to my original category placement. That said, it would be unfair to move them after the fact. I did one shift of category placement some time ago but it might be instructive to discuss more broadly why a film gets put into any given category. A discussion for later obviously.

Broad Contenders

Oscar Nominees That Were Broad
1. (80.6 / 100) – Dune: Part Two (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
2. (78.4 / 100) – Conclave (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
7. (69.1 / 100) – Wicked (Stage 4 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
9. (65.2 / 100) – Nosferatu (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
10. (62.9 / 100) – The Substance (Stage 4 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
11. (61.7 / 100) – Emilia Pérez (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)

Oscar Nominees That Were Not
3. (72.4 / 100) – Gladiator II (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
4. (70.5 / 100) – Maria (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
8. (68.7 / 100) – Nickel Boys (Stage 4 of 5; Pending Eligibility)

Non-Nominees
5. (70.2 / 100) – Blitz (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
6. (69.5 / 100) – The Piano Lesson (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)

Of the eleven films I placed in the Broad category, only two of them didn’t get nominated. I’m not going to say that’s a good result as I did remove several. Additionally, the non-nominees placed fifth and sixth, which isn’t a great showing. In addition to the two non-nominees, three films ended up being poorly categorized in the end. Gladiator II, Maria, and Nickel Boys were nominated but the former two were craft-only entries while the latter didn’t manage to get broad attention. I would say the Nickel Boys ranking makes sense comparatively so while it might have fit better in Narrow, I’m not disappointed in its performance.

I believe the biggest failing in this section is that the content/genres and pedigree factors were perhaps too high while the critical response numbers were too low. So let’s modify those factors to see if we can get a better result:

The weights I gave were 25% pedigree, 15% content/genres, 15% release strategy, 30% critical response, and 15% audience response. If I were to change those to 15%, 10%, 15%, 45%, 15%, the results would not be much changed. Only Nosferatu and Emilia Pérez would bump upwards, shifting into positions 7 and 8 respectively. That doesn’t mitigate the factors discussed above, so it’s not terribly instructive. That means that if the issue isn’t the weight of those categories, then it must be the individual results. I will shift some weight from pedigree to critical response since the pedigree seems to be less important than it once was.

I also need to be careful of overweighting certain past nominees like Ridley Scott whose film merited a very high pedigree factor, too high perhaps. Of course that might be moot if it were recategorized to craft. Maria and Blitz had much higher content/genre factors than others I think the difference between weighting legacy between original and adapted isn’t the best choice. I also think some of the genres need to be updated in their factors. Dune: Part Two, Conclave, and Wicked, all major contenders, had very low genre ratings, which put them well below their compatriots while dramas like Maria, Blitz, and Nickel Boys were boosted dramatically by the genre itself.

Narrow Contenders

Oscar Nominees That Were Narrow
12. (69.3 / 100) – Sing Sing (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
16. (65.7 / 100) – September 5 (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
21. (64.4 / 100) – A Real Pain (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
22. (64.3 / 100) – Anora (Stage 4 of 5; Pending Eligibility)

Oscar Nominees That Were Not
4. (73.1 / 100) – A Complete Unknown (Stage 4 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
24. (63.8 / 100) – The Apprentice (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)

Non-Nominees
1. (82.8 / 100) – Hard Truths (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
2. (82.5 / 100) – The Room Next Door (Stage 4 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
3. (79.6 / 100) – Kinds of Kindness (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
5. (72.0 / 100) – Juror #2 (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
6. (71.9 / 100) – Hit Man (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
7. (70.8 / 100) – Exhibiting Forgiveness (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
8. (70.4 / 100) – Saturday Night (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
9. (70.2 / 100) – The Fire Inside (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
10. (70.2 / 100) – Bird (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
11. (70.1 / 100) – Challengers (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
13. (68.7 / 100) – We Live in Time (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
14. (67.7 / 100) – Queer (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
15. (67.3 / 100) – His Three Daughters (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
17. (65.1 / 100) – Love Lies Bleeding (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
18. (64.8 / 100) – Ghostlight (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
19. (64.7 / 100) – Ezra (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
20. (64.5 / 100) – White Bird (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
23. (64.0 / 100) – The Bikeriders (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
25. (63.5 / 100) – Longlegs (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
26. (63.1 / 100) – Strange Darling (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
27. (62.3 / 100) – I Saw the TV Glow (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
28. (62.2 / 100) – My Old Ass (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
29. (60.2 / 100) – The Idea of You (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
30. (59.7 / 100) – Drive-Away Dolls (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
31. (59.5 / 100) – Janet Planet (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
32. (59.4 / 100) – Good One (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
33. (59.2 / 100) – Oh Canada (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
34. (56.0 / 100) – We Grown Now (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
35. (54.1 / 100) – In the Summers (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
36. (53.5 / 100) – Femme (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
37. (53.2 / 100) – La Cocina (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
38. (52.8 / 100) – Girls Will Be Girls (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
39. (52.2 / 100) – It Ends with Us (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
40. (47.9 / 100) – Handling the Undead (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)

For Narrow, the biggest deficiency was clearly loose guidelines for qualifications. Festival Awards and High Critical Reception overpopulated this particular category since most of these were not actual contenders. I know that I need to limit Festival Awards to a select few awards rather than any award at a festival and that might have kept some of these out; however, a lot of them were added because they had a MetaCritic score over 80. I may need to increase the threshold to 85 or 90. But that won’t address some of the other issues, namely the lower positioning of certain contenders.

Out of the forty titles on this list, only six ended up as Oscar nominees. The highest placement of those was A Complete Unknown while Best Picture winner Anora placed a measly 22, which was lower than three other Oscar nominees that did poorly. The placement for Anora, A Complete Unknown, and The Apprentice should probably have been different, though Anora fits the typical “Narrow” concept. A Complete Unknown would have better fit in Broad and The Apprentice should have gone into Acting only. That said, Sing Sing, September 5, and A Real Pain seem like films that fit the category as well but which didn’t do nearly as well as they could have.

Once again, it seems like Genre and Pedigree may have been a bit overtuned while Critical Response seemed to be in a good place. Why did these six films do as poorly? The pattern seems to be similar to Broad, the pedigree overweighted. I think trimming this category a bit with how many films are considered contenders might help it as well.

Acting Contenders

Oscar Nominees That Were Acting
None.

Oscar Nominees That Were Not
4. (70.4 / 100) – The Brutalist (Stage 4 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
11. (60.9 / 100) – A Different Man (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)

Non-Nominees
1. (73.8 / 100) – Babygirl (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
2. (73.6 / 100) – The Outrun (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
3. (71.2 / 100) – Small Things Like These (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
5. (68.0 / 100) – Suncoast (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
6. (67.7 / 100) – The Last Showgirl (Stage 4 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
7. (67.3 / 100) – Dìdi (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
8. (67.0 / 100) – Nightbitch (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
9. (66.5 / 100) – Fancy Dance (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
10. (62.4 / 100) – Tuesday (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
12. (60.6 / 100) – Thelma (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
13. (60.3 / 100) – Shirley (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
14. (59.1 / 100) – Heretic (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
15. (59.0 / 100) – Between the Temples (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
16. (58.7 / 100) – The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
17. (56.3 / 100) – Bob Marley: One Love (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)

With 17 films here, I feel the category seems to be properly established but the two Oscar nominees in this batch are The Brutalist and A Different Man and in hindsight, Brutalist should have been in the Broad category. The film did well and other than Small Things Like These, I can’t say the films higher on the list weren’t inappropriately seeded. The pattern holds that pedigree was overweighted and thus benefited those three films over Brutalist. There isn’t a lot to say about this category other than perhaps it should be folded into the Narrow category or, better yet, the categories being renamed and rearranged. We’ll get into that later.

Craft Contenders

Oscar Nominees That Were Craft
2. (65.9 / 100) – Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
4. (64.9 / 100) – Better Man (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
5. (60.7 / 100) – The Six Triple Eight (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)

Oscar Nominees That Were Not
None.

Non-Nominees
1. (66.9 / 100) – Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
3. (65.5 / 100) – IF (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)

With only five titles in this list, it’s hard to draw many conclusions. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, Better Man, and The Six Triple Eight are very different kinds of films and they were nominated in only one category each. These results all fell within a variance of 7 points. I would consider that something of a success. Furiosa underperformed entirely but that might be a result of its anemic box office tally rather than any other factor. It was well received by critics and audiences alike so it really should have been more of a contender this year than it was. You will always have flukes like this so I’m not at all disappointed in these particular results.

Effects Contenders

Oscar Nominees That Were Effects
4. (66.3 / 100) – Deadpool & Wolverine (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
12. (61.1 / 100) – Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
16. (57.3 / 100) – Alien: Romulus (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)

Oscar Nominees That Were Not
None.

Non-Nominees
1. (70.5 / 100) – Megalopolis (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
2. (67.5 / 100) – Here (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
3. (66.9 / 100) – Lee (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
5. (65.4 / 100) – Horizon: An American Saga Chapter 1 (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
6. (64.6 / 100) – Twisters (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
7. (63.2 / 100) – Joker: Folie à Deux (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
8. (63.0 / 100) – Mufasa: The Lion King (Stage 4 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
9. (61.7 / 100) – A Quiet Place: Day One (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
10*. (61.6 / 100) – Bad Boys: Ride or Die (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
10*. (61.6 / 100) – Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
13. (60.2 / 100) – Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
14. (60.0 / 100) – Venom: The Last Dance (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
15. (59.8 / 100) – Civil War (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
17. (47.5 / 100) – Kraven the Hunter (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
18. (42.4 / 100) – Hundreds of Beavers (Stage 4 of 5; Pending Eligibility)

Two Oscar nominees out of 18. That’s not a good look. Once again, it comes down to overly permissive entry guidelines. The $100 million box office factor for inclusion is perhaps too low. Or maybe it doesn’t need to be there at all. Only four titles on this list got in that way. Many of them were there because of pre-release buzz. That suggests that perhaps we need to reconsider what buzz is. Deadpool & Wolverine and Alien: Romulus fitted into opposite ends of this spectrum while Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes sat almost in the middle.

Horizon and Megalopolis were moved here after the films collapsed with critics. They should likely have stayed in Broad where they might have fit better. Lee didn’t really belong here either but the rest did. And all of them were in the conversation at one point, so I don’t see any particular failings other than Bad Boys: Ride or Die, a film that came nowhere near Oscar consideration. Megalopolis and Horizon didn’t much either but their inclusion makes sense. Pedigree is once again a demonstrative factor showing that it’s overweighted or poorly calculated.

It also seems that a lot of these middle categories, the Oscar nominees received a single nomination and that is somewhat telling. This adds fuel to the fire of potentially recalibrating categories into something more specific rather than more broadly general. Put a pin in that. We’ll get back to it later.

Animation Contenders

Oscar Nominees
1. (75.2 / 100) – Memoir of a Snail (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
2. (74.9 / 100) – Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
3. (72.8 / 100) – The Wild Robot (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
5. (68.4 / 100) – Inside Out 2 (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
7. (64.7 / 100) – Flow (Stage 4 of 5; Pending Eligibility)

Non-Nominees
4. (69.5 / 100) – Piece by Piece (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
6. (67.0 / 100) – Moana 2 (Stage 4 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
8. (64.1 / 100) – Transformers One (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
9. (63.3 / 100) – The Imaginary (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
10. (58.0 / 100) – Mars Express (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
11. (57.0 / 100) – Kung Fu Panda 4 (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
12. (55.8 / 100) – The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
13. (55.4 / 100) – Despicable Me 4 (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
14. (53.0 / 100) – Chicken for Linda! (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
15. (52.1 / 100) – The Garfield Movie (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)

This is one of two categories that has very strict entry requirements and you cannot exactly say they weren’t contenders. This is especially true with Animation where you literally have to be animated to contend. So how did this category perform? Quite well compared to the others. The five Oscar nominees came from the top 7 finishers. Piece by Piece and Moana 2 were the only ones to slightly outperform while Flow underperformed. In this category, it seems the easiest to determine where the model fails. Critical Response is not weighted nearly enough. Those two interlopers had dismal Critical Response ratings but that didn’t push them out of contention at all. They were also bolstered by high Content/Genre factors and Release Strategy factors. A little minor tinkering with the model might adjust all of these factors out.

International Contenders

Oscar Nominees That Were International
1. (68.9 / 100) – The Seed of the Sacred Fig (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
3. (66.0 / 100) – All We Imagine as Light (Stage 4 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
6. (64.8 / 100) – The Girl with the Needle (Stage 4 of 5; Pending Eligibility)

Oscar Nominees That Were Not
None.

Non-Nominees
2. (66.4 / 100) – Evil Does Not Exist (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
4*. (65.2 / 100) – Armand (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
4*. (65.2 / 100) – La Chimera (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
7. (62.5 / 100) – Vermiglio (Stage 4 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
8. (61.4 / 100) – Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
9. (58.8 / 100) – Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)
10. (57.0 / 100) – The Beast (Stage 5 of 5; Pending Eligibility)

This category is the one I’m least satisfied with. That’s not because it was out of whack but its intent was frustrated by the vagaries of Academy guidelines. The three Oscar nominees were all cited in Best International Feature but got no cross-over nominations, which is what this category was originally intended to represent. Evil Does Not Exist, Armand, and La Chimera were higher ranked than the results bore out. That said, again, none of these titles had any cross-over appeal and so we can draw few if no conclusions from this dataset. Emilia Pérez and Flow were the only two non-English language films to get nominations outside of International Feature but they were in different categories. I feel that All We Imagine as Light was close in both Directing and Writing but the others were not. Further, the only factor that was out of whack was content/genre, which boosted Armand too high while Evil Does Not Exist got boosted because of pedigree.

Now, let’s present some ideas for how to update and reconfigure for the 2025 year and see if we can get this model into better shape.

We’ll start with the primary factor of getting on the list. The $100 Million+ Box office milestone needs to go unless we limit such contenders to those films earning over 75% Rotten Tomatoes score. That would keep out a bunch of non-contenders that have no Oscar chances. While that might have precluded several terrible films that have snuck in for Original Song, Makeup & Hairstyling, and Visual Effects in the past, it seems, on the whole, that the Academy’s tastes have become more refined and that kind of limiting factor is no longer necessary. Of the 6 films that were listed because of that benchmark, not a single one was Oscar-nominated, so that will pretty well doom that.

The 80+ MetaCritic score entry requirement may need to be increased. That said, only 14 films out of 116 scored that high, which suggests it’s not a panacea. What’s more telling is that only 11 titles over 80+ MetaCritic score made it in on that factor alone and of those, only Seed of the Sacred Fig and The Girl with the Needle became Oscar nominees.

The Precursor Citation admittance requirement needs to be better defined. I didn’t assign it nearly as often as I should have. And of the post-factual 17 admitted under that rule, only two became Oscar nominees. Better Man and The Six Triple Eight, neither of which would likely have made it onto the list without that. The rest were non-entities.

26 were chosen based on our predictions throughout the year and that saw a full nine go onto nominations. Certainly a worthy admission requirement.

A seldom used factor was films being 2023 contenders shunted into 2024. By their nature, that should have meant the end of the road but it’s only fair to give them their fair shake in 2024. That said, only one, Dune: Part Two, managed to score an Oscar nomination and that would have made it in under pre-release buzz otherwise.

Ten films were admitted with festival awards. While that seems low, there were several I had on my list to cover but never got to and so the burden of proof suggests it doesn’t work even if three of those ten went on to Oscar nominations (Emilia Pérez, Anora, and All We Imagine as Light).

By far the most expansive guideline that allowed entries was the ill-defined Pre-Release Buzz. Really, any film could accomplish that and a staggering 38 were added to the list for that reason alone. That said, thirteen were eventual Oscar nominees, so they cannot entirely be discounted. That’s because some of those appeared on my initial Hopefuls list but since our Awards Landscape nomination predictions start with a handful of categories, this was the only way to get all of them on the list.

To conclude this section of the analysis, I’ll say that changes I am currently thinking about for 2024 are to set the 80+ MetaCritic and $100 million box office inclusion requirements to now need to meet two requirements inclusive to make it on the list. Further, the Festival Awards item will be solely for those films that win major awards at various Festivals. Awards like the Palme d’Or, Camera d’Or, Golden Bear, Audience Award at Toronto, etc. Directors Fortnight, for instance, will not be a qualifier. The only other one to likely change is the Precursor Award. Like festivals, we’re going to stick to major above-the-line awards from major organizations, the guilds plus any major critics group or other organization that’s been operating in excess of 25 years at a minimum, but we’ll probably cut that off at the major ones (NYFCC, LAFCA, CFCA, BSFC, NSFC, NBR, KCFCC, OFCS, etc.). That leaves Pre-Release Buzz and Predictions Citation and those will remain as is.

Precursor weighting is clearly an issue. Of course, changing that will also mean some changes to the underlying segments of those factors as well, so we’ll start with some general upkeep on those numbers. We start with dropping the pedigree factor to 15% for all but three categories. Craft, Effects, and Animation would decrease to only 20%. This is all dependent on whether these category types remain the same. They’ll likely change, but for now we’ll make changes to the existing factors.

Content/Genre is already pretty low, so I believe any changes there need to be made to individual contributing elements instead of the weight. Release/Strategy also needs an overhaul but on the underlying side not the weight. Critical Response definitely needs to increase in several areas. Where all the other areas are decreased, most, if not all, of the increase will be to this one. I also don’t think Audience Reception’s weight needs to change.

Digging into the underlying factors now might be folly. I want to give some thought to options to improve these. Changes to the pedigree section to be more forgiving of recent Oscar attention rather than any Oscar attention. Getting an Oscar 20 or 30 or 40 years ago but doing unrecognized work in the interim is usually not a good sign. I also think the studio needs to have some weight within pedigree. After all, a studio like Pixar, Laika, A24, or Searchlight have a much better track record than something like Roadside Attractions or Bleecker Street.

For Content/Genre, changes to genre factors to not punish adventure, musical, mystery, or romance might be a good adjustment. Legacy needs to change as well with sequels getting punished while adaptations being increased to match originals. Length and MPAA rating also likely need to be pared back or eliminated altogether. Most films fall into a sweet spot already but The Brutalist was punished for its excessive length and that probably shouldn’t have been a factor in its score.

For Release/Strategy, how a film releases isn’t nearly as important as it used to be. Streaming is no longer a death knell for a film while the distinctions between platform releases and regular limited/wide releases isn’t distinct enough to matter in most cases. The release month, however, is still important, as is whether or not it releases to a festival. A festival appearance can bolster a film’s chances but not always. I will still degrade a score based on when it won the festival (such that a film that waits a year to release will get half points for it). Beyond that, I can’t see where many changes need to be made.

Critical Reception is entirely numeric and I don’t see why that should be changed at all. The current balance between MetaCritic and Rotten Tomatoes is fine. That said, Audience Reception needs to be tweaked. With films getting semi-wide releases rather than full wide releases, it’s harder to assess how a film fits between strictly limited and strictly wide release strategies. CinemaScore was an interesting addition but it doesn’t apply to every film, so it might not be worth keeping. I’ll have to sleep on that.

With all of that out of the way, I think I’m going to put this year’s awards to bed and focus on building my tracking database for next year, including setting up the various changes discussed above and a few new ones as well. Feel free to drop a comment and let me know what you think could be improved with this system.