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Nominations voting is from January 11–16, 2024, with official Oscar nominations announced on January 23, 2024. Final voting is February 22–27, 2024. And finally, the 96th Oscars telecast will be broadcast on Sunday, March 10, and air live on ABC at 8 p.m. ET/ 5 p.m. PT. We update predictions throughout awards season, so keep checking IndieWire for all our 2024 Oscar picks.
The State of the Race
With “Dune: Part Two” (Warner Bros.) out of the running (pushed to March 15, 2024), Gareth Edwards’ sci-fi thriller “The Creator” (20th Century/Disney) emerges as the new favorite. However, Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” (Universal) poses the strongest threat, while Disney also offers “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” (Lucasfilm), “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” (Marvel), and “The Little Mermaid.”
Other contenders include “Transformers: Rise of the Beasts” (Paramount), “Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One” (Paramount), “John Wick: Chapter 4” (Lionsgate), “Wonka” (Warner Bros.), “Poor Things” (Searchlight Pictures), “Barbie” (Warner Bros.), “Blue Beetle” (DC/Warner Bros.), and “Napoleon.”
For Edwards, “The Creator” marks a significant evolution from “Monsters,” “Godzilla,” and “Rogue One.” He’s made an $80 million indie film with the lightweight Sony FX3 prouse camera, shot in 80 locations in Southeast Asia, that looks like $200 million. And he reverse-engineered the shoot by doing the VFX from ILM in post. It’s about a war between humanity and AI that’s a cross between “Blade Runner” and “Apocalypse Now,” starring John David Washington as a hardened ex-special forces agent who encounters a very special AI simulant child (Madeleine Yuna Voyles) that looks human. The naturalistic VFX (production supervised by Jay Cooper) includes animating the simulants, a robotic army, invisible environment work, and two late scenes in the StageCraft LED Volume.
For “Oppenheimer,” Oscar-winning production VFX supervisor Andrew Jackson (“Tenet”) collaborated closely with Oscar-winning SFX supervisor Scott Fisher (“Tenet,” ‘Interstellar”) to shoot lab experiments in aquarium tanks for the simulated liquids and other materials for the quantum physics sequences. Everything was shot in camera (including 65mm IMAX) and then manipulated, layered, and composited in the computer. Same for the atomic blast, which was a series of large and small practical explosions treated and composited in the computer. The reason that Nolan can claim that there was no CGI in the film is because there was not a single shot derived from CG simulation. With only around 100 VFX shots, the work serves a supporting role, but it’s a monumental achievement. The fact that less than 20 percent of the DNEG artists were listed on the end credits is an unfortunate oversight that does not detract from the excellence of their mostly compositing work.
The de-aging of Harrison Ford in “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” was an impressive tech breakthrough by ILM that should get strong Oscar consideration, despite the film’s disastrous box office performance. What’s more, the “ILM FaceSwap” utilized every tool in their VFX arsenal and was achieved with the help of more than 100 artists. This was no AI-dependent solution (though machine learning compiled and analyzed the hundreds of hours of footage of Ford from the first three “Indiana Jones” movies). The key was the actor’s on-set performance and his agility, coupled with the successful implementation of the light-based capture system called FLUX and the shot-specific remedy to complete the work, including lots of keyframe animation.
James Gunn’s “Guardians” finale became a touching Rocket story (including his painful origin story as a cruel lab experiment), and Framestore was integral in pulling off the animation with complicated fur interaction. In addition, Framestore made use of an expanded Groot design to make him a stronger and more powerful character. Wētā FX returned as well to principally create the colossal, ruby-covered spaceship, the Arête, and an entire city surrounding the Arête that was loosely based on Seattle.
For Rob Marshall’s live-action reworking of Disney’s “The Little Mermaid,” Framestore did the impressive “Blue Planet”-inspired undersea animation, including the CG versions of Sebastian (voiced by Daveed Diggs), Flounder (voiced by Jacob Tremblay), and Scuttle (voiced by Awkwafina). It all came together in a reinvention of the Oscar-winning “Under the Sea” number. Additionally, MPC created sea witch Ursula (Melissa McCarthy) in layers for her “Poor Unfortunate Souls” musical number and destructive finale.
The “Transformers: Rise of the Beasts” prequel offers a new wrinkle worth considering. It features the first-time team-up between the Autobots and the Maximals. MPC and Wētā took over from ILM, with the former doing the design and both sharing the robot animation. The beast-like Maximals, which mix fur and flesh with their metal parts, offered some new challenges, while Optimus Prime (voiced by Peter Cullen) was made more human-like in keeping with a character arc as part of his origin story.
“Dead Reckoning,” which got caught in the box office crossfire between “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer,” upped its VFX game for Tom Cruise’s spy franchise. ILM provided a CG version of the Fiat 500 for the Rome car chase, vast background terrain builds for the sky diving sequence, and a combination of techniques for the spectacular Orient Express train sequence. This is where the train plummeted from the high, exploding bridge, one carriage at a time. The FX team split the full digital bridge into the individual bricks and ballast that would be created in the construction of an actual bridge of that period and design and used that as the basis for full rigid body destruction simulations. Dust, smoke, and water simulations were then used to enhance the atmospherics and water splashes that were in the photography.
Greta Gerwig’s blockbuster “Barbie” contained 1,300 VFX shots from Framestore (production supervised by Glen Pratt). These were steeped in the cinematic language of the ’40s, ’50s, and ’60s to complement the meticulously crafted sets and to expand Barbie Land beyond the studio lot. The hyperreal perfection of Barbie Land required no dirt, dust, scuffs, or blemishes, while the distinctive surfaces, materials, and lighting choices also meant unlearning normal rules. The opening “Dawn of Man” riff on “2001: A Space Odyssey” made use of the LED Volume seamlessly blended with in-camera VFX, matte painting, and real-world foreground props; the LED Volume was also used for Barbie driving her trademark pink Corvette to capture accurate interactive lighting reference.
Paul King’s (“Paddington”) “Wonka” musical origin story, starring Chalamet as Willy Wonka, contains VFX by Framestore. From the trailer, it has a Victorian “Harry Potter” meets “Oliver! vibe. There’s flying for joy over his magical candy and all sorts of other whimsical confections and animal creatures. There’s also the old-fashioned trick of forced perspective with Hugh Grant’s tiny Oompa Loompa. But the simulated chocolate is a character all its own.
As for the rest: “Blue Beetle,” which features Xolo Maridueña’s eponymous alien biotech superhero, Digital Domain created the animation with the help of a new cloth system for the costume, utilizing machine learning and a custom neural network for helping the cloth react to movement; “John Wick: Chapter 4” boasts 1,523 digital shots from several VFX companies to create incendiary shotgun shells, a blind assassin’s eyeballs, a CG dog, and hundreds of ring finger removals; Ridley Scott’s “Napoleon,” starring Joaquin Phoenix as the legendary French emperor, touts epic battles, massive crowds, and background enhancement (including Egyptian pyramids used for target practice) from MPC and ILM; and Yorgos Lanthimos’ “Poor Things,” a wild, Victorian “Frankenstein” gender-bender, touts electrical lab experiments, retro-looking backgrounds and even cross-bred animals from Union VFX.
Potential nominees are listed in alphabetical order; no film will be deemed a frontrunner until we have seen it.
Frontrunners
“Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3”
“Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny”
“Oppenheimer”
“The Creator”
“The Little Mermaid”
Contenders
“Barbie”
“Blue Beetle”
“John Wick: Chapter 4″
“Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One”
“Napoleon”
“Poor Things”
“Transformers: Rise of the Beasts”
“Wonka”
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– Armessa Movie News