The 2025 Oscar nominations are here, and they offer our first glimpse at which movies are most likely to win best picture. Emilia Perez led all movies with 13 nominations, followed by Wicked and The Brutalist which both picked up 10.
That nominations total suggests that support for Emilia Perez is strong among members of the Academy, a good sign given that the movie has been divisive amongst critics. That slew of nominations makes the movie one of the most nominated films of all time, but it’s unclear whether it will be enough of a consensus choice to ultimately take home Best Picture.
If Emilia Perez is too divisive, The Brutalist might be the film leaving nomination day looking the best. Its 10 nominations wwere not the day’s high watermark, but the film with the most nominations is not always guaranteed to take home the trophy. Instead, this epic, which tells the story of a tortured immigrant architect living in America after World War II, might be the movie best positioned to win it all.
Brady Corbet, the movie’s director, seems extremely likely to take home best director, and the movie could also win a major prize for Adrien Brody’s stunning central performance. Emilia Perez, meanwhile, was nominated in many of the most important categories but did not win in any of them.
The Oscars preferential balloting system will come into play here. That system, which is essentially ranked-choice voting, means that movies that are consensus choices are favored over those that some members hate. Emilia Perez might get a lot of first-place votes as well as some last-place votes, whereas The Brutalist is likely to hang out in the middle of more ballots.
We can’t say for sure which movie will emerge victorious, but these nominations give us a sense of which movies are most likely to be competing down the stretch.
