13 of the Biggest Contenders for the 2027 Oscars

It’s time: the year’s biggest film festivals are now done and dusted, the season’s major movies have assembled, several juggernauts have already fallen by the wayside (goodbye to Digger and The Social Reckoning), and the starting gun for the 2027 awards season is about to go off for the remaining contenders. To come: more glitzy premieres, much frenzied campaigning, and the emergence of the narratives that will rule Hollywood for the next few months, in the run-up to the Oscars on March 14. As we all strap in, these are the 13 releases to add to your watchlist.

The Odyssey

The one to beat. Christopher Nolan scored 13 nominations and no fewer than seven wins, including for best picture, with his last directorial effort, Oppenheimer, at the 2024 Oscars, and his follow-up is an even more obvious example of awards catnip. An ambitious, weighty adaptation of Homer’s epic with an all-star cast that grossed over $1 billion? Forget about it—it’s not a question of if it can take the best-picture statuette, but rather who could possibly stand in its way. (If it has an Achilles heel, it’s the film’s sidelining of women characters, though the Academy hasn’t historically been deterred by such discourse.) Nolan will, most definitely, be in the running for best director once again, while the likes of Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway, Samantha Morton, and Robert Pattinson are jostling for position in the various acting races. Add to that recognition for Nolan’s screenplay, Ludwig Göransson’s thundering score, the booming soundscape, the eclectic casting, astounding cinematography, slick editing, eye-popping visual effects, and intricate production design, costumes, and make-up, and you could very well have a record-breaking haul. Both reassuringly old school at heart and cutting-edge in its technical wizardry, it’s surely a slam dunk for many voters.

Wild Horse Nine

The Oscars love Martin McDonagh—between In Bruges, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, and The Banshees of Inisherin, his darkly comic capers have racked up 17 Academy Award nods and two wins, both for acting (Frances McDormand and Sam Rockwell for Billboards). The director has a statuette himself, too, but won it over two decades ago: best live action short for Six Shooter. Isn’t it high time the polymath ascended the podium for his feature-length work? All being well, he should next year for his razor-sharp original screenplay in his latest offering, a politically charged tragicomedy centred on John Malkovich and Rockwell as freewheeling CIA officers running riot on Easter Island in the volatile ’70s. Beyond that, this hilarious, heartfelt two-hander is a strong best-picture contender, and Malkovich, who took the Venice Film Festival’s Volpi Cup for best actor, is also a frontrunner for his charming, slippery turn. (At 72, the legend has had an unparalleled career and two Oscar nominations without any wins.) Rockwell should also show up in best supporting actor, and if McDonagh’s confident direction, Carter Burwell’s swaggering score, the expert casting, majestic cinematography, zippy editing, and glorious costumes and sets are recognized as well, then Banshees’s tally of nine nods would easily be surpassed.

The Invite

Olivia Wilde’s raucous sex comedy is a total delight, and despite its relatively modest scale—four actors, a single location, a $15 million budget—it’s an awards-season dark horse you shouldn’t count out. Alongside being in the mix for best picture, the helmer and star could herself score a one-two punch with both best-director and best-actress nominations. Meanwhile, Penélope Cruz should get into best supporting actress for her delicious and playful turn as the assured foil to our anxious live wire of a leading lady, and it’s not inconceivable that Edward Norton also squeezes into the best-supporting-actor line-up with his own zany work. (Seth Rogen, on the other hand, is running in the lead category and will almost certainly be shut out of a crowded best-actor race.) The prize this crowdpleasing Sundance breakout is most likely to go home with, though, is best adapted screenplay, for Rashida Jones and Will McCormack’s side-splitting reimagining of The People Upstairs, the 2020 Spanish film on which it’s based. Nods for editing, casting, and production design also feel possible, making this the all-round little film that could—the kind of movie Hollywood wants and sorely needs more of.

Project Hail Mary

Having come out all the way back in March, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller’s sci-fi saga-turned-poignant buddy comedy is at risk of being forgotten. But having grossed almost $700 million and gained a committed fan following, this is a much less self-serious blockbuster that deserves to face off against The Odyssey. We will likely see it in best picture, though Ryan Gosling’s presence in best actor is a little up in the air. Single-handedly holding this movie together with his immense charisma and magnetism, as the school teacher who is dispatched on an impossible extraterrestrial mission, he’s more than earned it, but it’s true that the Academy generally favours more dramatic performances in this category. Still, expect this barnstorming hit to pop up in best adapted screenplay, plus a string of below-the-line races: best sound, production design, cinematography, and visual effects. And if Sandra Hüller comes through with a best supporting actress nomination for her deadpan, karaoke-singing bureaucrat? Well, then it might be an even stronger contender than we previously suspected.

La Bola Negra

When Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi’s Cannes sensation (the pair took the festival’s best-director prize earlier this year) secured Toronto Film Festival’s Audience Award, a crucial Oscars bellwether, it surged up the proverbial awards season leaderboard. A sumptuously rendered, time-jumping period piece about interconnected queer histories, anchored by a set of memorable performances—perhaps most notably from Spanish musician Guitarricadelafuente, in his acting debut—it currently seems poised to take the best-international-feature prize. But there could be recognition elsewhere, too, including in best picture, director, adapted screenplay, cinematography, casting, production design, and costume design. From Roma to All Quiet on the Western Front, Netflix has a long history of successfully campaigning for non-English language historical fables—but can this be the studio’s first movie to scoop the top prize? Only time will tell.

The Debut

After Jesse Eisenberg’s quirky character study debuted at Telluride, the news came in that the best-actress race was all but over: Julianne Moore, as the New Jersey housewife who gets a new lease on life when she joins a community theater production, had apparently blown her competition out of the water with her greatest performance to date. Aside from that, the surreal musical comedy has proved a touch more divisive, though it could definitely also show up in best picture, original screenplay, original song (for the delightfully titled “This City May Have Chewed Me Up (But It Hasn’t Spit Me Out),” which will go head-to-head with Taylor Swift’s “I Knew It, I Knew You” from Toy Story 5), and best supporting actor for Paul Giamatti, as the megalomaniacal director who transforms our heroine’s life forever.

Artificial

Once The Social Reckoning crashed out of the Oscar race, there was room for a tech-world thriller with terrifying contemporary resonance. Enter: Luca Guadagnino’s beleaguered, long-awaited portrait of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, as embodied by a deeply unsettling Andrew Garfield. This film has had a very troubled road to release—its original distributor, Amazon, dropped it days after signing a $50 billion deal with OpenAI—but, thankfully, it has since been acquired by Neon. Rumors that this frantic hot potato was also to do with the project’s less-than-stellar quality were refuted almost as soon as it premiered at the New York Film Festival: it is, by all accounts, a bracing examination of our unstable, shape-shifting present, which is ready to take awards season by storm. Look out for it in best picture, original screenplay, score (Damon Albarn’s electronic soundscape is hair-raising), and best supporting actor, where previous two-time nominee Garfield may finally get his due. For those who fear for Hollywood’s future in the age of AI, this could be the movie to get behind.

You Can See Everything

The hottest ticket at Telluride was a secret screening of this head-spinning, jaw-dropping documentary (or is it?) from Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, which follows Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes in the weeks ahead of her imprisonment. Reviews were rapturous—so much so that many pundits have predicted it to become the first non-fiction film ever to be nominated for best picture. It’s the galvanizing shot in the arm this awards season desperately needed.

Dune: Part Three

Every awards season brings a late-breaking Timothée Chalamet vehicle. Last year it was Marty Supreme, and before that A Complete Unknown. This time, it’s the final installment of Denis Villeneuve’s mind-melting space opera. Dune netted 10 Oscar nods and six wins in 2022, while Dune: Part Two brought five nods and two wins in 2025, though many argued this was because voters wanted to wait for the billion-dollar franchise’s conclusion to honor it as a whole, à la The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. Now, they’ll get their chance, though this obviously depends on this last film living up to the hype. If it does, could it take best picture? Can Villeneuve, after four nominations for directing, writing, and producing, get the best-director Oscar that has always eluded him? And what about best adapted screenplay, casting, cinematography, production design, costumes, Make-up, visual effects, et al? Who knows, 2027 could be the year it walks away with (almost) everything.

Fjord

It’s hard to know what will happen with Cristian Mungiu’s Palme d’Or-winning thriller, an early Oscar contender that has been floundering since its trip around the autumn film festivals, where American audiences have so far received it less warmly than their international peers. The tale of a Romanian family, conservative Christians who relocate to Norway and are looked on with suspicion by their close-knit new community, it’s spiky and confounding, morally murky and emotionally devastating—a brilliant, thought-provoking piece of work which is, nevertheless, a difficult film to really love and root for in an awards-season context. Even if this keeps it out of the best-picture line-up, it should, at the very least, show up in best international feature. Then there are the transformative performances—Sebastian Stan, a previous Oscar nominee for The Apprentice, disappears into the part of the prickly patriarch, but he’s unlikely to show up in best actor simply given how competitive that race is. It’s less clear when it comes to Renate Reinsve—as the clan’s troubled mother, she has the softer, more likeable role and performs it exquisitely. In the running for best actress earlier this year for Sentimental Value, she’s widely beloved and could be back in that category, though it’s far from guaranteed.

Elsinore

The main challenger to Wild Horse Nine’s John Malkovich in best actor is Andrew Scott, who is transcendent in Simon Stone’s Telluride-premiering Shakespearean melodrama, a deeply moving account of actor Ian Charleson’s stint playing Hamlet on the National Theatre stage while slowly succumbing to AIDS. (If Scott wins, he’d—unbelievably—be the first openly gay actor to secure this particular statuette, despite a number of straight men taking it home for playing queer characters.) The film around him never quite reaches the heights of his talents, but it’s possible that his work and the endless goodwill surrounding it propels the tearjerker to a best-picture nod, too.

Obsession

Hats off to Inde Navarrette, who went from virtual unknown to one of Hollywood’s most sought-after rising stars via her fully committed, nightmare-inducing turn in Curry Barker’s horror mega hit, as the potential love interest who’s turned into an obsessive girlfriend by a magical One Wish Willow. In the best-actress race, she’s currently second only to The Debut’s Oscar-winning, five-time nominated Julianne Moore—no mean feat for a 25-year-old with only a handful of big-screen credits under her belt. But what about the movie more broadly? One of the highest-grossing releases of 2026 so far, it’s made a whopping $500 million from a less than $1 million budget and is a riotously entertaining example of the scrappy, inventive, culturally plugged-in future of cinema. Given the Academy’s continued resistance to this genre, it probably won’t get into best picture, but it’d be very, very exciting if it somehow did.

Club Kid

A heartwarming romp that tracks a 30-something party boy (a winning Jordan Firstman, also making his feature directorial debut here) who is suddenly forced to care for the son he never knew he had, this indie darling rocketed out of Cannes to almost universal acclaim and has continued to soar ever since. It could get lost amongst the noisy blockbusters and big prize winners, but will, I suspect, be a word-of-mouth favorite that many voters will fall head over heels for. It’s deserving of a best-original-screenplay nod, but a spot on the best-picture line-up isn’t entirely out of the question either.