Oscars 2025 predictions: Who will win and who should win at this year’s Academy Awards

Will it be Demi Moore or Mikey Madison? Timothée Chalamet or Adrien Brody? And is ‘Emilia Pérez’ really, truly dead in the water? Ahead of this Sunday’s Academy Awards, Adam White predicts who will reign supreme in the show’s major categories.

Unusually, we are days away from an Academy Awards where question marks still remain over a number of its major categories. At this point last year we were all pretty sure that Oppenheimer and Christopher Nolan would dominate on the night – which they did. This year things are very different. And, yes, that is because of Karla Sofía Gascón’s old tweets.

The Emilia Pérez star’s resurfaced social media presence – full of racism, cruelty and, somewhat hilariously, anti-Oscar sentiment – has had an unmistakable ripple effect on the Academy Awards as a whole, with what seemed to be an Emilia Pérez sweep suddenly flying off the table.

Gascón herself – whose literal presence at the ceremony is, at the time of writing, still up in the air – has no chance of winning Best Actress any more, while there’s now a shadow over the film she’s in. Winning Best Picture or Best Director at this point seems unlikely, which opens up a space for other titles that have long been snapping at its heels.

This makes Sunday’s Oscars surprisingly tense, with the madcap stripper tale Anora, the Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown and the gargantuan The Brutalist all duking it out for the big wins. Recent high-profile Best Actress wins for Anora’s Mikey Madison and The Substance’s Demi Moore (Madison got the Bafta and the Independent Spirit; Moore got the Golden Globe and SAG) have made the pair neck and neck, too.

Ahead of the ceremony, we’ve cast an eye over the major categories and decided who will win, who should win, and who really should have got a look-in. Because justice for Challengers!. The Brutalist. A Complete Unknown. Conclave. Dune: Part Two. Emilia Pérez.

I’m Still Here. Nickel Boys. The Substance. Wicked. Will win: Anora. Should win: Dune: Part Two. Shoulda got a look-in: Challengers. With Emilia Pérez seemingly on life support, a late-stage surge in support for Anora seems to have pushed that film over the line. It makes sense: it has none of the dour trickiness of The Brutalist, a beautiful new star at its centre and, in Sean Baker, a director who has emerged in the last decade as one of the most intriguing and essential new-ish voices in indie filmmaking. The movie has also successfully breezed over its moments of controversy (noticeably the lack of an intimacy coordinator on set, per Mikey Madison’s request). It’s in a very rosy position. Questions will remain, though, as to how Dune: Part Two – the concluding half of one of the most emotional, ambitious and technically dazzling blockbusters in recent memory – was just never a real factor in this race. Likewise, Luca Guadagnino’s sexually charged tennis drama Challengers, which was better acted and more skilfully crafted than at least three nominees in this category.

Adrien Brody, The Brutalist. Timothée Chalamet, A Complete Unknown. Colman Domingo, Sing Sing. Ralph Fiennes, Conclave. Sebastian Stan, The Apprentice. Will win: Timothée Chalamet. Should win: Adrien Brody. Shoulda got a look-in: Justice Smith, I Saw the TV Glow. OK, hear me out: could Timothée Chalamet’s more Oscar-friendly movie and more Oscar-friendly personality grab the Best Actor prize from the tips of Adrien Brody’s fingers? Maybe! Remember when everyone assumed Michael Keaton would win Best Actor for Birdman in 2015, only for grinning, congenial, just-happy-to-be-there Eddie Redmayne to swoop in at the last minute to take home the award instead? Perhaps lightning could strike twice (Chalamet’s win at the SAG Awards on Sunday night gave him a further shot in the arm). Even if Brody does, admittedly, give the better performance. Missing here, by the way, is Daniel Craig’s dizzying work in Queer, his absence from Best Actor one of the stranger twists of this Oscar season. Less surprisingly absent is Justice Smith for the hypnotic trans mystery I Saw the TV Glow, but whose piercing, late-film scream remains one of the most haunting moments of 2024. Wouldn’t it have been cool if he got some awards traction this year?.

Cynthia Erivo, Wicked. Karla Sofía Gascón, Emilia Pérez. Mikey Madison, Anora. Demi Moore, The Substance. Fernanda Torres, I’m Still Here. Will win: Demi Moore. Should win: Demi Moore. Shoulda got a look-in: Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Hard Truths. There have been whispers that Madison could prove victorious here – a theory mostly bolstered by her Best Actress win at the Baftas – but I’m still convinced this is Moore’s for the taking. While Oscar loves an ingenue, and Fernanda Torres is stoic and sublime in I’m Still Here, Moore just stomps all over her fellow nominees when it comes to sheer risk: in The Substance, she is both vulnerable and ferocious, her work also feeling in conversation with Moore’s erratic 40 years in the business. Surely she’s taking it? That said, sorely missing in this category is Marianne Jean-Baptiste, whose damaged, destructive, tragicomic work in Mike Leigh’s Hard Truths goes to places few actors dare go. What a shame she wasn’t able to grab a spot here.