After the 2024 Oscar Nominations, Are There Any Big Surprises?

The 96th Academy Award nominations were announced today, and a slew of people got that early call from their family, friends, and publicists to congratulate them on a job well done. However, although many of the awards season favorites were present and accounted for, there were some surprises with some inclusions and noticeable exclusions.

Leading up to the Academy Award nominations, several precursors sometimes indicate where the nominations could be headed. Critics groups name their favorites, while ceremonies such as the Golden Globes, SAG Awards, and BAFTAS play a very important role. Awards season has seen films such as Oppenheimer, Barbie, Anatomy of a Fall, American Fiction, and Poor Things, among others, making a strong case that they would appear big on Oscar nomination morning. Now that the big player is here, the dust can finally settle on who did not make the cut, and now the real debate can begin regarding whether Academy voters got it right.

America Ferrera Received a Best Supporting Actress Nod for Barbie

Perhaps the big surprise of the day was Barbie, but not in the way you might think. Despite being nominated for all the major precursors, star Margot Robbie missed out on a Best Actress nomination for her nuanced turn in the titular role. The Best Actress field was incredibly competitive, and it’s possible Oscar voters went in another direction by nominating Sandra Hüller for her riveting turn in Anatomy of a Fall. That performance is no doubt deserving of praise, so this could be a case of Robbie just missing the top five by the smallest margin.

Another surprise snub from Barbie was filmmaker Greta Gerwig missing out on a Best Director nomination. Despite showing up in the DGA nominations, often a solid indicator of where the Best Directing Oscar category is headed, Gerwig was not acknowledged for her work on the biggest film of 2023. Barbie earning $1.4 billion worldwide isn’t even the first and foremost reason that Gerwig was expected to earn a nomination.

Barbie is an incredibly nuanced film and the ultimate satire, speaking about real issues of female worth and toxic masculinity while also being exceptionally commercial. That was no easy feat, and many directors couldn’t have made this work, but Gerwig did. It’s also a bit puzzling that the film was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay, a nom Gerwig will share with partner Noah Baumbach, and Best Picture, but received no directing love from The Academy. Needless to say, Barbie didn’t direct itself.

All the Barbie surprises weren’t about its misses. America Ferrera, who many believed had an outside shot of earning a Best Supporting Actress nomination, managed to take that show and run with it by having her name called this morning. Ferrera didn’t show up in all the precursors leading up to the Oscar nominations, but the Best Supporting Actress field did have what some believed to be a wild card spot that could’ve been taken by Penélope Cruz (Ferrari) or even Rachel McAdams (Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret). It came down to Ferrera having her unforgettable monologue in Barbie thanks to the tremendous writing.

Bradley Cooper earned three nominations for Maestro, including Best Actor, Best Original Screenplay (shared with Josh Singer), and Best Picture as a producer. Still, he was noticeably absent from the Best Director category. It is not a secret that Cooper put his blood, sweat, and tears into this project as a filmmaker, and he felt like an early awards season favorite for a spot in that top five, but it appears he lost momentum as the Oscar nominations approached.

Some seemed turned off by how much Cooper appeared to want this acknowledgment, but it shouldn’t be viewed as a detriment to put in your best work and be proud of it. Again, as is the case with Gerwig, the film earned a nomination for its screenplay and for Best Picture, so it’s a bit baffling that Oscar voters didn’t think Cooper’s direction of the film was worthy of notice.

Like Gerwig and Cooper, Alexander Payne was left out for directing The Holdovers, despite the film earning a Best Picture nomination. He was more of a wild card than some of the other choices, but he did show up in the DGA nominations alongside Gerwig, so it seemed like he had a real shot of earning a nod for his work on the film. This is another case of a movie earning screenplay and film notices but missing out on directing, which could mean that competition was truly stiff for a spot in the final five.

Lily Gladstone Makes History & Sterling K. Brown Gets an Oscar Nod

Killers of the Flower Moon earned 10 Oscar nominations, including big nods for Best Picture, Best Director (Martin Scorsese), Best Actress (Lily Gladstone), and Best Supporting Actor (Robert De Niro). The directing nomination is a record for Scorsese, his tenth recognition by The Academy, which allows him to surpass Steven Spielberg, while Gladstone made history as the first Native actress of American descent to be Oscar-nominated. These recognitions did not go unnoticed, but it was noticeable that Leonardo DiCaprio missed out in the Best Actor category while the film’s script didn’t show up for Best Adapted Screenplay.

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Killers of the Flower Moon: Martin Scorsese Unveils What Makes Leonardo DiCaprio ‘One of the Greatest Actors’ In History

Martin Scorsese expressed gratitude for Leonardo DiCaprio’s unrivaled talent during his acceptance speech for Killers of the Flower Moon.

DiCaprio wasn’t a sure thing for a nomination since he did miss a few major precursors, but The Academy does love him, and some of his other work with Scorsese has received love from Oscar voters (The Aviator and The Wolf of Wall Street). The Best Actor category, much like Best Actress, was incredibly competitive this year, so this can come down to it being a very stacked category. As for Adapted Screenplay, Barbie was switched to this category after campaigning for Original Screenplay all season. It’s more than likely that when this switch occurred, Barbie swooped in on one of the spots, and that left out Killers of the Flower Moon.

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse was always poised for Oscar success and was rightfully nominated for Best Animated Feature. However, some thought it had the momentum to earn a Best Picture nomination. Perhaps even more glaring than that snub, Daniel Pemperton’s magnificent score for the film, which was regarded as one of the best of the year, also didn’t receive a nomination. It seems like the support was there, but Oscar voters didn’t seem to connect with it.

Sterling K. Brown earned a surprise nomination for his scene-stealing turn in American Fiction despite not ultimately showing up in some of the precursors. Critics raved about his performance, and he had an outside shot, similar to Ferrera, to get in, and he snagged his shot, too. Earning the SAG nomination helped his chances in the Best Supporting Actor category, and Oscar voters didn’t let his performance go unnoticed.

Critics seemed to love May December, one of the best-reviewed films of the year, but its road to the Oscars seemed to stumble once SAG and BAFTA shut the film out and now The Academy has done the same. Charles Melton was a big hit with critics’ groups for his riveting performance in the movie, but he was snubbed by the Oscars while Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman could’ve shown up in the Best Supporting Actress and Best Actress categories, respectively, but they also missed the mark. Todd Haynes didn’t receive love as the director of the film, and the movie also missed out on Best Picture. The big takeaway is that sometimes the critics don’t align with Oscar voters.

Even though Gerwig missed out in the Best Director category, Justine Triet shows up for female representation for her work on Anatomy of a Fall. Triet earned two nominations for Best Director and Best Original Screenplay (which she shares with Arthur Harrari), while the film also earned a Best Picture nomination. France didn’t submit Anatomy of a Fall in the International Feature category, so seeing it show up with other major notices makes up for that omission.

Another feat that shouldn’t be ignored is that six of the Best Picture nominees (Barbie, Past Lives, Anatomy of a Fall, Maestro, Poor Things, and Oppenheimer) have female producers in their ranks. Some of these films were the biggest movies of the year (Barbie and Oppenheimer), while others broke barriers in other ways by displaying complex stories and characters (Poor Things, Maestro) and showing the honest and tragic side of human emotions (Past Lives, Anatomy of a Fall). No matter how you spin it, women were power players behind some of the most acclaimed films of the year, and that should certainly be acknowledged.

The 96th Academy Awards are set to air live coast-to-coast on ABC Sunday, March 10, at the Dolby Theatre at Ovation Hollywood. The ceremony will be airing at a new earlier time this year at 4:00 PM-7:30 PM PT/7:00 PM-10:30 PM ET.