Meet This Year's Best Picture Contenders
As we head into the holiday season, we also head into the heart of film awards season. And once again, we are looking at a rather unpredictable year. Though cinemas have mostly reopened this year, the Oscar race is once again being impacted by the pandemic, with many films failing to reach the large audiences that would have greeted them in a normal year—or reaching them directly in their homes rather than on the big screen.
But the uncertainty doesn't mean we don't have a general idea of which films will contend for best picture nominations at the upcoming Oscars. We have surveyed industry experts, calculated the Metascores, and examined the top performing films at this year's major film festivals to come up with a list of 20 potential best picture contenders from 2021, plus a few bonus wildcards.
What is it? A new big-budget adaptation of Frank Herbert's epic sci-fi novel that was previously (and less successfully) adapted by David Lynch in 1984. Actually, it's only part of an adaptation; the film's title was recently changed from Dune to Dune: Part One to reflect the fact that a sequel will arrive in 2023.
Why is it a contender? Successfully adapting an impenetrable work previously considered mostly unfilmable, it's a visually stunning film described by critics as "awe-inspiring" and "astounding," It also stars Timothée Chalamet and Oscar Isaac, which can't hurt. It's also an international box office hit, which also can't hurt.
What are its chances? Surprisingly good! The Academy doesn't often nominate sci-fi films, but it has been happening more often over the past decade, and 2016's Arrival, from the same director (Denis Villeneuve), did get a best picture nomination. Then again, Villeneuve's Blade Runner 2049 had better reviews than Dune and was not a best picture nominee. And the film's incompleteness—despite a lengthy runtime it tells only about two-thirds of the book's story and ends rather abruptly—can't help its chances. Nevertheless, nearly every expert predicts that Part One will indeed be nominated.
When can I see it? Dune is currently both in theaters and streaming on HBO Max, though it will leave the streaming service on November 21.
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