Trophy Talk

Rotten Tomatoes Predicts the 2025 Oscars

Here are our best, highly educated guesses as to who will take home the hardware on Sunday night, from reasonably secure guesses to not-so-sure things.

by Jacqueline Coley | February 26, 2025 | Comments

Another eventful Oscar season is coming to a close, and we are making our final predictions for who will take home the hardware come Sunday. This season has seen several ups and downs and quite a few changes in the frontrunner position. On our Awards Leaderboard, The Brutalist, The Substance, and Anora have do-si-doed for the top spot for weeks. However, as we approached the final days, few could confidently say they were sure who would take home Best Picture and quite a few other noteworthy categories. This is primarily due to the plurality of significant awards this year and the looming haze left by the devastating Los Angeles wildfires.

The fires arguably shaped this season more than ever before. Yes, we have the fundraisers, photo ops, and thankful moments with first responders at the ceremonies, but how the natural disaster and clean-up shaped voting is still being sorted out. It is quite possible that when we reexamine this year, the improbable back-to-back wins by Anora at the PGA & DGA reflected a distracted LA voting body rather than a mark of Best Picture bonafides. Or we may look at Conclave‘s BAFTA win as a reflection of the film’s British sentiments and its SAG win as a reflection of its watchability more than its Oscar chances.

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The tea leaves are there, as conflicting as they may be, and it’s up to us to decipher them — a task more difficult this year as many of the films we thought were safe stumbled due to bad headlines. Between the Emilia Pérez tweets controversy, The Brutalist AI controversy, the Anora Intimacy Coordinator controversy, and the Wicked existing-in-the-award-season-at-all controversy, you’d be hard-pressed to find a film that didn’t catch a stray at some point.

The results have been surprising. Kieran Culkin was bandied about as a Best Supporting Actor nominee when A Real Pain premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. The Substance, Anora, and Emilia Pérez were all lauded heavily and honored by the Cannes Film Festival after they debuted and went on to execute stellar awards season runs. Meanwhile, later entries like Wicked, The Brutalist, and Nickel Boys proved that despite some early season doubts, they had enough to make it into the final Best Picture slate. I’m Still Here‘s improbable but well-deserved Best Picture nomination re-solidified the global influence within the Academy. And that trend has echoed in previous editions, going back to Parasite’s historic win in 2019.

Director Denis Villeneuve and star Timothée Chalamet on the set of Dune: Part Two (2024) — (Photo by Niko Tavernise/©Warner Bros.)

In truth, the only Best Picture nominee that could say they’re operating with a heavy level of disappointment is Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Two, which found the director, his screenplay, and score snubbed in categories many assume to be competitive contests. But all of this shapes up for a reliably exciting final chapter of the season.

And Best Picture is not the only contest this year with burning questions this late in the game. Demi Moore won Best Actress at the Critics Choice, Golden Globes, and SAG Awards, but Mikey Madison won at the Indie Spirits and the BAFTA, so now our supposedly sown-up Best Actress race is still alive. This is to say nothing of the wild card that is Fernanda Torres, who many believe has a quiet bit of support amongst Academy members that has yet to be seen in any of the primary match-ups.

Zoe Saldaña in Emilia Pérez (2024) — (Photo by ©Netflix)

Zoe Saldaña and Kieran Culkin have swept every contest this year, making them the odds-on and undeniable favorites to win their categories. But on the Best Actor side, a surprise late win by Timothée Chalamet has many people wondering if Adrien Brody’s two-time Oscar hopes will evaporate in the final weeks. Chalamet, the youngest SAG winner for Best Actor, has the chance to unseat Brody, the youngest Oscar winner for Best Actor, after Brody himself did the same to previous Oscar winners and season frontrunners Jack Nicholson and Daniel Day-Lewis in 2003.

This is not to say that the above-the-line contests are the only ones with drama. The adapted screenplay has a potential contest between Conclave and Nickel Boys, though the vaping pope thriller has the odds in its favor. There’s still no final word on who would win between the trio of Original Screenplay hopefuls Anora, The Substance, or The Brutalist, with even others guessing that it might go to Jesse Eisenberg for A Real Pain. The Wild Robot has been ranked high on our Awards Leaderboard for much of the season, but it’s not a foregone conclusion that DreamWorks Animation will win over the dialogue-free indie animation Flow. We also want to know if the dark horse favorite Nosferatu can unseat The Brutalist to win the Best Cinematography prize. This is all to say, these predictions could look wildly off come Sunday, but we are still excited to give our takes.

Our Awards Editor, Jacqueline Coley, has made these guesses based on potential nominees’ critical reception (hello, Tomatometer!), the nominations and wins they’ve been receiving from guilds and other groups during awards season, and what we’re hearing from voters and other industry folks — aka the “buzz.”

Read on for our picks for the 2025 Oscar nominations. Let us know who you think will win in the comments, and tune in on Sunday, March 2, on ABC at 7 PM EST/4 PM PST to see if we — or you — were right.

Best Picture

Who will win

93% Conclave (2024)

Possible Spoilers: Anora

Shoulda Been a Contender: Babygirl, Challengers

Best Actor In a Leading Role

Who will win?

Adrien Brody, The Brutalist

Possible Spoilers: Timothee Chalamet, A Complete Unknown

Best Actress In A Leading Role

Who will win?

Demi Moore, The Substance

Possible Spoilers: Mickey Madison, Anora; Fernanda Torres, I’m Still Here

Shoulda Been a Contender: Zendaya, Challengers; Nicole Kidman, Babygirl

Best Actor In a Supporting Role

Kieran Culkin and Jesse Eisenberg in A Real Pain (2024)

(Photo by Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures)

Who will win?

Kieran Culkin, A Real Pain

Possible Spoilers: Not a chance.

Best Actress In A Supporting Role

Zoe Saldaña in Emilia Pérez — (Photo by Netflix)

Who will win?
Zoe Saldaña, Emilia Pérez

Possible Spoilers: Not a chance BUT – Ariana Grande should win an Oscar for her adlibs alone. “Right?!”, “Give me my leg?!”, “toss toss” Pure Cinema!