We’re looking at each individual category for the Oscars and what our thoughts are going into the final stretch. We’ll adjust our thoughts based on the precursor associated with this category, Casting Society of America. Below are our predictions in Best Casting.

Best Casting

Winner Predictions

• Hamnet
• Marty Supreme
• One Battle After Another
• The Secret Agent
• Sinners (WL) (PP) (TL)

Runner-Up Predictions

• One Battle After Another (WL) (PP) (TL)

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Wesley Lovell: When people contemplate the casting award, especially when separate from the ensemble award, they tend to conflate the two believing that a great cast is a sign of great casting. This is not the whole story. The question will be whether the success of the cast is more important than the actual casting director job of finding the right actors to play the allotted parts. That’s why this race comes down to One Battle After Another versus Sinners. Sure, members of the Academy should know the difference but as the confusion between Sound Mixing and Sound Editing shows, that is most definitely not the case. That said, One Battle wasn’t nominated by the Casting Society of America and that is telling. Sinners won one of their trophies. Combine that with the win at SAG for Best Cast and it seems like both ensemble and casting beliefs are aligned behind Sinners for the win. That said, if there’s a sweep towards One Battle, Sinners should be mildly concerned.
Pete Patrick: One Battle After Another may be the better film overall but Sinners has the best cast.
Thomas La Tourrette: This has always felt like a slam dunk for Sinners. One Battle probably has more characters and lots were very strongly drawn, but the cast of Sinners stands out for me. It also boasts a big cast and the characters were vividly portrayed. I did not fault any performance. As this is the inaugural award for this category, we have nothing to base predictions on, but I believe that Sinners will win.

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