Figure skaters Madison Chock and Evan Bates are bringing home gold at the team event after competing at the Winter Olympics, but their second-place finish in the ice dancing competition is drawing controversy. “We’ve certainly gone through a roller coaster of emotions, especially in the last 24 hours,” Chock said to NBC News. “And I think what we will take away is how we felt right after our skates and how proud we were of what we accomplished and how we handled ourselves throughout the whole week. Putting out four great performances at the Olympic Games is no small feat, and we’ve got a lot to be proud of.” The couple placed second in the rhythm dance and the free dance competition; France’s Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Guillaume Cizeron came in first in the overall competition, beating them by 1.43 points.
Some judges’ scores throughout the Olympics drew criticism, like two free dance scores; one judge from Spain ranked Chock and Bates third, and a judge from France ranked the French couple 7.71 points higher than the American couple — five of the nine judges ranked Chock and Bates first.
The husband-and-wife duo, who have been fan favorites leading up to the Winter Olympics, have won three World Championships in a row and led to some confusion about their scoring but it seems like the couple accepted their second place in stride. “I feel like life is sometimes you can feel like you do everything right and it doesn’t go your way, and that’s life and that’s sport,” Bates explained. “And it’s a subjective sport. It’s a judged sport.”
Photo: Fanatics Sportsbook / OBB Media / Sophie Sahara
This year’s Super Bowl commercials are leaning into the supernatural. Kendall Jenner is facing the most talked-about rumors of her this year, and her ad spot is no exception. She might be bad luck for her ex-basketball-player boyfriends, so the supermodel has been turning a negative into a positive by placing bets on her exes. Jenner’s a part of the family business, after all. Even Emma Stone gets a little spooky with Squarespace in her first “Big Game” ad (and yet another collaboration with Yorgos Lanthimos), teasing some sort of black-and-white mystery at a lighthouse.
Below, every Super Bowl LX ad released or teased leading up to the big game on February 8.
A Pringle rose by any other name would be just as crunchy.
The Dazed and Confused duo would definitely benefit from delivery rather than pick-up for their gardening inspired chat.
The duo that will now be known as Boone-lander is going full New Wave for Instacart.
And by thongs, he, of course, means flip-flops. Get your mind out of the gutter.
There’s no Mayhem in this Gaga-starring spot where the singer covers Mr. Rogers’s “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” for Redfin and Rocket.
The Mayor of Flavortown is getting a new ’do in the teaser for Bosch.
Budweiser showcased a typically serious commercial, pitching down the line of Americana with a narrative about a horse growing up and running with a bald eagle. Caw!
Pepsi is going on the offensive, making Coke’s polar bear choose between Coke and Pepsi in a blind taste test.
Olympians Chloe Kim and TJ Oshie are amazed by a ski jump in the Michelob Ultra teaser. But who was the coach?
Photo: Eva Marie Uzcategu/Getty Images for Netflix
Jake Paul is being very emo in his pre-bout trash talk. “I want him to cut me up, I want him to break my face,” he said of upcoming opponent Anthony Joshua, “but guess what, he’s gonna have to kill me to stop me, and I’m ready to die. Seriously, ready to die in the ring to win this fight.” Do you still technically win a fight if you’re dead? Sure there’s that ancient Greek wrestler, but that story seems apocryphal at best. TMZ reported the press conference, held ahead of their December 19 fight in Miami.
Paul was originally scheduled to fight WBA lightweight champ Gervonta “Tank” Davis last Friday, but that match was called off after Davis was accused of intimate partner violence inalawsuit. It’s a big change for Paul, who had been expecting to box against someone much smaller than him in an exhibition match. He’s now going into a sanctioned heavyweight fight against someone bigger and more experienced than him. Joshua is a former Olympic gold medalist and two-time unified heavyweight champion.
Joshua is on-board with Paul’s plan of getting his face broken. “If I’m being honest, I’m going to break his face,” he said, “I’m going to break his body up, I’m going to stomp all over him.”
You can watch this all-over stompage live on Netflix, by the by. The pair will face off at Kaseya Center in Miami. The live-streamed fight is scheduled for eight 3-minute rounds. Joshua’s promoter, Eddie Hearn, doesn’t like Paul’s odds. “They say be careful what you wish for, kind of feel like that’s all I need to say,” Hearn said in a statement obtained by ESPN. “Two of the biggest names in the sport will collide on Dec 19. Whilst I admire Jake’s balls, he’s going to find out the hard way in Miami.”
Jump for joy! A deal has been reached. Photo: Eric McCandless/Disney via Getty Images
To quote Homer Simpson, woo-hoo! Our corporate overlords are finally getting along. Disney and YouTube TV have squashed their carriage beef, signing a deal to bring all your favorite ESPN, ABC, and Disney properties back to YouTube’s streamer. Disney Entertainment co-chairmen Alan Bergman and Dana Walden and ESPN Chairman Jimmy Pitaro praised the deal in a joint statement obtained by The Hollywood Reporter. “We are pleased that our networks have been restored in time for fans to enjoy the many great programming options this weekend, including college football,” they wrote. “Subscribers should see channels including ABC, ESPN and FX returning to their service over the course of the day, as well as any recordings that were previously in their Library,” a spokesperson for YouTube said Friday night. “We apologize for the disruption and appreciate our subscribers’ patience as we negotiated on their behalf.”
Disney’s channels — including ABC, ESPN, Freeform, and FX — went dark on YouTube TV October 30. It was the longest carriage dispute in recent memory, far exceeding the Charter Communications tiff in 2023. That only lasted 11 days. Reports found that this dispute was particularly bitter, with CEOs Bob Iger (Disney) and Sundar Pichai (Google) allegedly brought in to speed things along. It’s times like these one yearns for an old school antenna.
Halloween weekend at the box office offered a few final scares, including a last-minute resurgence for Black Phone 2 and the reanimated corpse of BookTok powering the Colleen Hoover adaptation Regretting You. Behind them, Bugonia expanded to modest numbers, and One Battle After Another continued its run as the biggest points-earner of the season.
It seemed as if Black Phone 2 would end its run at the top of the box-office charts after only a week when Chainsaw Man cut it down to size last weekend. But in classic horror movie fashion, the Ethan Hawke—fronted horror sequel rose up from the grave for one last scare. Initial estimates put the Grabber’s second outing neck and neck with (and even slightly behind) the rom-dram Regretting You, but when the numbers finally shook out, Black Phone 2 took the weekend’s top spot with $8.3 million, pushing its cumulative total to $61 million. Factoring in bonus points for clearing $50 million and finishing No. 1, Black Phone 2 is now at 126 total points, second to only One Battle After Another (192 points) on the overall leaderboard. Considering that 80 of those OBAA points are from the Gotham Awards nominations last week, Black Phone 2 is the league leader thus far in terms of pure box office. That’s good news for the 1,773 of you who had enough faith in the Grabber to pick the movie up for $5.
Meanwhile, Regretting You held on admirably in its second week. It’s easy to forget now, but the 2024 film It Ends With Us wasn’t just the pretext for an extended media controversy and eventually the basis of a lawsuit involving Blake Lively and director-star Justin Baldoni. It was, in fact, a $350 million worldwide summer box-office smash, and a big factor in its success is that it was based on a hugely popular novel by Colleen Hoover. Regretting You — a romantic drama starring Allison Williams and Dave Franco that, as far as we know, has not generated any lawsuits — did not drum up nearly the kind of fervor as the previous Hoover adaptation. But at a cost of only $3, the 352 people who drafted the film have gotten decent value out of it so far.
One Battle After Another picked up another $1 million and change in its sixth week, inching it ever closer to the $75 million bonus-point threshold. That’s nice, but after last week’s Gotham-nominations haul, box-office performance is about to become a marginal portion of OBAA’s greater points portfolio. The same likely cannot be said for Tron: Ares, which needed to be a $100 million–to–$200 million blockbuster to end up as a worthwhile buy for its 896 teams. At $67 million and with dwindling awards possibilities (maybe it will show up on the Oscars’ Visual Effects shortlist), that outcome seems unlikely.
In terms of movies that are significant awards contenders, Bugonia expanded wide, pushing to $5 million cumulative and fifth place at the weekend box office. For comparison’s sake, Poor Things didn’t expand to 2,000-plus screens until its eighth week, but it still managed to clear $5 million in its third weekend, on only 800 screens, en route to a $34 million domestic take. On the other end of the Yorgos Lanthimos–Emma Stone line is last year’s Kinds of Kindness, which had made only $3.8 million after three weeks and on 900 screens. Bugonia’s box-office performance is closer to the Kinds of Kindness side of things, though the film’s awards prospects seem better.
And now for our weekly banging of the Roofman drum: After four weeks in release, Roofman sits at a respectable $21 million, putting it ahead of the following movies:
• Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere — $16M • The Smashing Machine — $11M • Bugonia — $5M • After the Hunt — $3M
Does this mean anything? Is Roofman just at the top of a list of relatively low-earning movies with prestige elements that 20 years ago would have made five times what they’re making now? Perhaps! I still say let’s put Channing Tatum in the Oscars race.
You can visit the MFL landing page to scope out the full leaderboard with information on mini-leagues — and join us on Discord for expanded stats and discussions.
Predator: Badlands: November 7 Christy: November 7 Die My Love: November 7 In Your Dreams: November 7 Nuremberg: November 7 Peter Hujar’s Day: November 7 Sentimental Value: November 7 Train Dreams: November 7 Now You See Me: Now You Don’t: November 14 The Running Man: November 14 Jay Kelly: November 14 Keeper: November 14 Arco: November 14 Come See Me in the Good Light: November 14 (Apple TV+) Left-Handed Girl: November 14 Sirāt: November 14
Gotham Awards: December 1 New York Film Critics Circle announcement: December 2 Film Independent Spirit Awards nominations: December 3 Critics Choice Awards nominations: December 5 Golden Globe nominations: December 8
The first major nominations of awards season are here and everything is still coming up PTA. Thanks to a 2023 rule change that removed a $35 million budget cap on eligible films, One Battle After Another led the Gotham Awards nominations with a record total of six nods (Best Feature, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Outstanding Supporting Performance for both Benicio del Toro and Teyana Taylor, and Breakthrough Performer for Chase Infiniti). The points have been tallied and added to the leaderboard, but you’ll have to wait till next week’s newsletter for a full analysis of the Gotham noms and how they will affect the league. In the meantime, let’s just say you should be feeling pretty good if you bet on Rose Byrne’s performance carrying If I Had Legs I’d Kick You into the awards conversation.
If you’re not already signed up for the MFL, it’s not too late to join — you can still build a contending team with movies that haven’t yet been released. Joe Reid’s draft guide runs through each eligible film. The final draft deadline will be Thursday, December 18. If you don’t want to miss out, draft now.
➼ The first step is to draft a team of eight eligible movies released in 2025 using a budget of 100 fake dollars. Each movie has been assigned a value based on its points-earning potential.
➼ New for This Season: In past years, we closed registration when the season started: If you didn’t sign up by that date, you couldn’t play. This year, we’re extending registration through December — with a catch:drafting after September 25 means you’ll be limited to only films that haven’t yet started accruing points (i.e. you can only draft unreleased movies that haven’t been nominated for any awards.)
➼ Starting on September 26, you’ll accrue points based on the box-office performance, awards haul, and critical reception of the movies you picked. Each week starting Tuesday, September 30, the updated leaderboard will be available on this page and in the weekly MFL newsletter.
➼ The teams that earn the most points when the game ends after the 2026 Oscars will win one or more of the great prizes below.
➼ If you want to compete against your friends, family, or co-workers, you can create a mini-league. Alternatively, you can join a mini-league associated with your favorite creator. You’ll find more details on that below.
➼ There’s a limit of one entry per email address. You can’t modify your team once it has been submitted, even if a movie you picked gets rescheduled to next year.
The Creators Division: Dozens of our favorite culture-podcast hosts and producers, Substackers, and newsletter writers are competing in a subset of the MFL. When the leaderboard is live, you’ll be able to filter to see how the various creators are faring against each other. At the end of the season, the winner will receive an ostentatious championship belt, because why not?
Mini-Leagues: You can play against a set of friends in a mini-league. Have everyone in your crew enter the same league name on the ballot when you each register, and then you’ll be able to filter the standings to see how everyone in your group is doing. There will also be mini-leagues associated with most of the participants in the Creators Division; stay tuned for more info on those groups. You can only participate in one mini-league, so that may mean choosing between your friends and your favorite creator.
Prizes
Oh, look, it’s an array of fantastic prizes. Here’s what’s up for grabs:
Grand Prizes (1st–3rd Place)
The overall winner gets to select one of the following devices:
The second-place finisher gets to choose between the remaining two, and third place will get the final item. You can’t go wrong.
Criterion Channel Subscription (1st–10th Place)
Photo: Criterion Channel
Everyone who finishes in the top ten will be rewarded for their efforts with a yearlong subscription to the Criterion Channel’s streaming library, otherwise known as Ben Affleck’s idea of heaven.
Pick Your Players
Registration is open for the 2025–26 season. Once you’ve done your research, you can select your team by clicking the ostentatiously colored button below. Now that the early draft window is closed, you’re limited only to unreleased films that haven’t started accruing points. Sign-ups will close for the season on December 18.
Not ready to draft yet? Sign up here for a reminder to build your team before the draft window closes for good.
Scoring Categories
Once your roster is selected, you will earn points in three categories:
1. Domestic Box-Office Performance
Movies will only be eligible for box-office points if they are released on or after September 26 (once the scoring window begins). Points will be awarded in the following manner (based on Box Office Mojo):
Every $1 million earned: 1 point Clears $25 million: 10-point bonus Clears $50 million: 15-point bonus Clears $75 million: 15-point bonus Clears $100 million: 20-point bonus Clears $125 million: 15-point bonus Clears $150 million: 15-point bonus Clears $175 million: 15-point bonus Clears $200 million: 25-point bonus Reaches No. 1 at the domestic box office: 20 points per week spent at No. 1
2. Critical Performance
Points will be awarded in the following manner (based on the Metacritic “Metascore”):
Metacritic points will be awarded all at once on January 6 and will not be adjusted based on subsequent score fluctuations. Only movies that have been released and have a Metascore score at the time of scoring are eligible for Critical Performance points.
3. Awards
Points will be awarded for both awards nominations and wins. See the calendar below for points associated with each event.
Welcome back, friends and fools, to year FIVE of the Vulture Movies Fantasy League. We are about to turn the corner into a fall movie season that is packed with box-office behemoths, visionary auteurs bringing their latest films into the bosom of awards season, and a whole lotta questions about whether a vampire movie about race in America can play the long game all the way to Oscar gold.
If you’ve played the Movies Fantasy League before, the game hasn’t changed much; if you’re new, welcome to the circus. You can check out the rules for how to play on our MFL hub, but here is the nutshell summary: You select a roster of exactly eight films within a budget of 100 imaginary dollars. Once the scoring phase of the game begins, the films you’ve drafted will accumulate points for achieving milestones in box-office take, precursor awards/nominations, critical approval, and more. The movies we expect to do best will cost more, so your first task will be to manage your budget wisely.
In order to help you make wise choices, we have assembled the following draft guide. Below, you will find a listing for every movie that’s eligible to draft in the MFL this year. You can see how much they cost, the talent behind them, what film festivals they’ve played, and when they will debut to the public, either in theaters or on streaming (if they haven’t already).
Movies begin to accumulate points on kickoff day, September 26. Any movie that opens on that day or after is eligible to earn box-office points. Anything that has already opened, or will open before the 26th, is box-office ineligible and will be denoted as such in the guide. Between September 26 and the final deadline on December 18, you’ll still be able to draft a team, but during that span, you will only be able to draft films that haven’t started accruing points. That means you’ll be limited to unreleased movies that haven’t been nominated for any awards. So you’ll have to decide carefully when you want to draft your roster. We’ll remove movies from this guide when they’re no longer eligible to be drafted to avoid any confusion and disappointment.
It’s going to be an exciting few months, so why waste any time — read ahead and start researching!
Director: Jon M. Chu Stars: Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande, Jeff Goldblum, Michelle Yeoh Release date: November 21
Our top point-earner from last season, Wicked, was priced to sell at $20, mostly because there was still a lot of uncertainty around whether the film would bomb with critics (and subsequently awards voters). It didn’t, though, so last year’s success means a trip back to Oz for your fantasy squad won’t come cheap.
➼ Box-office ineligible Director: Ryan Coogler Stars: Michael B. Jordan, Hailee Steinfeld, Delroy Lindo Release date: Already released
Sinners is pretty much the only known quantity from the first half of 2025 that you can feel confident will be a major part of this year’s Oscar race. And while you won’t be able to benefit from the film’s hefty box office, the confidence of being able to select a film that you already know critics and audience loved could be worth the price tag.
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson Stars: Leonardo DiCaprio, Benicio del Toro Release date: September 26
Paul Thomas Anderson hasn’t whiffed with the Academy since 2002’s Punch-Drunk Love (though it’s worth noting that 2014’s Inherent Vice only got a screenplay nomination). Academy members seem to be big PTA fans. Combine that with DiCaprio as a former ’60s radical, plus Oscar winners like del Toro and Sean Penn and breakthrough-ready talent like Teyana Taylor and Chase Infiniti, and things are looking good. Plus, Warner Bros. is said to have pumped up to $175 million into this project, so you better believe it’s going to push hard to get a return on that investment.
Director: Noah Baumbach Film festivals: Venice, Telluride, New York Stars: George Clooney, Adam Sandler Release date: November 14
Baumbach had his big Oscar breakthrough with Marriage Story several years ago; now he’s back with a very Oscar-friendly story about an aged movie star (Clooney) and his loyal agent (Sandler). Oscar narratives abound: Clooney has big “we’re so back” potential, while the already-percolating Supporting Actor campaign for Sandler feels like it’s been in the works for 25 years. This has every indication of being Netflix’s top-tier awards push.
Director: Joachim Trier Stars: Renate Reinsve, Stellan Skarsgård Film festivals: Cannes, Telluride, Toronto, New York Release date: November 17
While it fell short of winning the Palme d’Or at Cannes, Sentimental Value did emerge from the festival with buzz as the most likely of the Cannes competition titles to follow the path to Oscar victory recently traversed by recent Palme winners Anatomy of a Fall and Anora.
Director: James Cameron Stars: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña Release date: December 19
The first Avatar made $2.9 billion worldwide and got nine Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director. The second Avatar made $2.3 billion worldwide and got four Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture but not Best Director. Even with that rate of diminishing returns, the third Avatar should still bring in plenty of points. The question is whether this third one can deliver something that puts Cameron back in the Oscar conversation.
Director: Guillermo del Toro Stars: Oscar Isaac, Jacob Elordi Film festivals: Venice, Toronto Release date: October 17
Del Toro has been hot with Oscar ever since The Shape of Water took Best Picture eight years ago. His strange but artful Pinocchio adaptation turned out to be a huge MFL bargain a couple years ago after it ran the table in the animation categories all season. The question is how much Netflix as the distributor will cap Frankenstein’s value. It’s giving del Toro’s film the rare three-week theatrical run as opposed to the customary two, but that doesn’t mean you should expect much in the way of box-office points. Still, given del Toro’s reputation — and the recent performance of other high-end gothic horror like Nosferatu — this should be a strong player across at least the craft awards (production design, costume, cinematography, visual effects) all season.
Director: Yorgos Lanthimos Stars: Jesse Plemons, Emma Stone Film festivals: Venice, Telluride Release date: October 24
With The Favourite and Poor Things, Lanthimos has directed two previous films to double-digit Oscar nomination totals, including Best Picture/Best Director nominations and Best Actress wins for Olivia Colman and Emma Stone. Whether he can do the same with a film from writer Will Tracy (Succession, hooray!; The Menu and The Regime, hmmm) remains to be seen. Plemons and Stone reunite after Lanthimos’s perplexing Kinds of Kindness, but Focus Features is putting out all the indicators that this has big Oscar ambitions.
Director: Scott Cooper Stars: Jeremy Allen White, Jeremy Strong Film festivals: New York Release date: October 24
Last year, Searchlight pushed the Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown all the way to major Oscar nominations and a near Best Actor win for Timothée Chalamet. This year, 20th Century Studios wants in on that action with its Bruce Springsteen biopic starring TV’s most intense performer, Jeremy Allen White. Cooper has already put a guitar in one actor’s hands and directed him to an Oscar — Jeff Bridges in Crazy Heart — and Strong is already starting to build Supporting Actor buzz after his nomination last year.
Directors: Jared Bush, Byron Howard Stars: Jason Bateman, Ginnifer Goodwin Release date: November 26
Last year, Moana 2 opened on Thanksgiving weekend and racked up $225 million right out of the gate, despite pretty much everyone agreeing the film wasn’t good. The original Zootopia cleared the original Moana’s domestic take by nearly $100 million. That math could really end up working in your favor.
Director: Benny Safdie Stars: Dwayne Johnson, Emily Blunt Film festivals: Venice, Toronto Release date: October 3
Of the two Solitary Safdie Sibling movies this year, this is the one about MMA fighting. Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt reunite from their Jungle Cruise days to play real-life Ultimate Fighting Champion Mark Kerr (him) and his loyal, understandably concerned wife (her). If Blunt ends up with two Oscar nominations to her name for playing the Wife, that’s going to be wild, but that’s a conversation for another day. This movie is going to be either too middlebrow for awards appeal or the sentimental fave of awards season. (And I could see A24 making it a bit of a box-office hit, too.)
Director: Luca Guadagnino Stars: Julia Roberts, Andrew Garfield, Ayo Edebiri Film festivals: Venice, New York Release date: October 10
Guadagnino struck out, Oscar-wise, with his two features last year, Challengers and Queer. But this year, he returns with Oscar winner Julia Roberts, Oscar nominee Andrew Garfield, and Emmy winner Ayo Edebiri in a hot-button drama about scandal and the generation gap in academia. Will this be Tár lite or something altogether trashier? It remains to be seen.
➼ Box-office ineligible Director: Edward Berger Stars: Colin Farrell, Tilda Swinton Release date: October 15
Berger has directed two straight films to Oscar nominations in All Quiet on the Western Front and Conclave; he’s trying for his third with this story about a maxed-out gambler (Farrell) who finds himself on the skids in Macau. The trailer looks intense, and Farrell’s part seems juicy. Don’t expect box-office points, however, as Netflix is giving this its customary two-week qualifying theatrical run, where box-office receipts are not usually reported.
Director: Hikari Stars: Brendan Fraser, Akira Emoto Film festivals: Toronto Release date: November 21
One big-time potential crowd-pleaser candidate for awards season is this film from Japanese director Hikari (Netflix’s Beef). It centers on Fraser as an American actor living in Tokyo who takes a job as a stand-in for various roles in real people’s lives. Lost in Translation meets a softer version of Yorgos Lanthimos’s Alps? Could really connect with people.
Director: Chloé Zhao Stars: Jessie Buckley, Paul Mescal Film festivals: Telluride, New York Release date: November 27
Zhao joins the laundry list of Oscar-winning directors releasing films this fall, though she’s looking to bounce back from her Marvel misadventure Eternals. Here, she’s adapting Maggie O’Farrell’s novel, a fictionalized account of William Shakespeare and his wife, Anne, in the aftermath of losing their young son, Hamnet. Yes, that name does look and sound awfully similar to Hamlet. Shakespeare has done well at the Oscars in the past — just ask Gwyneth Paltrow and Judi Dench how they got their trophies — and both Buckley and Mescal are young actors who have been recently admitted into the fold by Oscar voters (she was nominated for 2021’s The Lost Daughter, he for 2022’s Aftersun) and are seeking their first wins. That recipe could add up to a contender.
The year’s second solo Safdie is also a sporting affair, though in this case it’s about ping-pong champion Marty Mauser (Chalamet) and his exploits at the table-tennis … uh, table. This one looks quirkier than Josh’s more blunt instrument (no pun intended, Emily), but Chalamet has scored at the December box office two years in a row now (Wonka in 2023, A Complete Unknown last year). Maybe the prince of Christmas will deliver again.
Director: Joachim Rønning Stars: Jared Leto, Greta Lee Release date: October 10
Red flags exist if you’re looking for them. Rønning’s most prominent titles are a middling collection that includes the fifth Pirates of the Caribbean movie, the second Maleficent, and Young Woman and the Sea. 2010’s Tron: Legacy made decent money but left a lot of its audience nonplussed. But there’s a lot to be said for a visual spectacle (visual effects and sound awards feel like they’re in play), and it’s going to play in Imax for a couple weeks, which should help box-office totals.
Director: Jafar Panahi Stars: Vahid Mobasseri, Ebrahim Azizi Film festivals: Cannes, Telluride, Toronto, New York Release date: October 15
Four of the last five winners of the Palme d’Or at Cannes have gone on to become Best Picture nominees at the Oscars, with two of them (Parasite and Anora) winning. So there’s definitely reason to be optimistic about It Was Just an Accident. Even if the film isn’t as broadly appealing as recent Palme winners, there’s a good chance it follows the awards trajectory of previous Cannes hits like The Zone of Interest.
Director: Kathryn Bigelow Stars: Idris Elba, Rebecca Ferguson Film festivals: Venice, New York Release date: October 24
Oscar winner Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker) returns to global politics, only this time, the crisis is fictional. The film depicts a U.S. White House scrambling to deal with an impending missile strike on America. It’s been a while since Bigelow was a major player on the Oscar scene, but working off of a script from the screenwriter of Jackie (and, um, The Maze Runner), interest will be piqued.
Director: Bradley Cooper Stars: Will Arnett, Laura Dern Film festivals: New York
Bradley Cooper’s stand-up comedy movie? Bradley Cooper’s divorced-guy movie? Bradley Cooper’s SmartLess movie? (Sean Hayes also co-stars.) Whatever this movie turns out to be, Cooper always makes awards season more interesting.
Director: Bill Condon Stars: Jennifer Lopez, Diego Luna, Tonatiuh Film festivals: Sundance Release date: October 10
Jennifer Lopez doing a full-blown musical from the director of Dreamgirls sounds like it could be a dream come true … or a fantastic nightmare. Either way, it will be a spectacle. In the old days, Lopez would be assured of a Golden Globe nomination no matter how it turned out. The Globes have gotten more buttoned-up lately, though, so we’ll see how it goes.
Director: Derek Cianfrance Stars: Channing Tatum, Kirsten Dunst Film festivals: Toronto Release date: October 10
There was a while there in the 2010s where Channing Tatum was doing daring work with directors like Bennett Miller, Quentin Tarantino, the Wachowskis, and the Coens. Then he seemed to retreat into safer rom-com fare. Perhaps teaming up with the director of Blue Valentine and The Place Beyond the Pines for a film about a thief hiding out in the walls of a Toys “R” Us will get critics and audiences excited once again.
Director: James Vanderbilt Stars: Rami Malek, Russell Crowe Film festivals: Toronto Release date: November 7
Vanderbilt wrote the screenplay for David Fincher’s Zodiac, among others, but the only film he’s directed was the real-life journalism drama Truth that premiered in Toronto before fizzling in awards season. Hopefully history doesn’t repeat itself for this biographical drama/psychological thriller about the trials of Nazi officials after World War II. Malek, who hasn’t been nominated for an Oscar since he won for playing Freddie Mercury in 2018, plays a psychologist who examines the Nazi officials before trial. Crowe, who hasn’t been nominated since 2001’s A Beautiful Mind, plays Hitler’s second-in-command, Hermann Göring.
Director: Dan Trachtenberg Stars: Elle Fanning, Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi Release date: November 7
After making the direct-to-Hulu Predator-universe movie Prey feel like a legitimate blockbuster a few years ago, Trachtenberg gets to take the next film in the series to theaters where it belongs. With a plot that pairs an outcast Predator (Schuster-Koloamatangi) with an unlikely ally in Fanning’s Thia, Badlands could be the horror-inflected large-format movie that succeeds in the window between Tron and Wicked.
Director: Clint Bentley Stars: Joel Edgerton, Felicity Jones Film festivals: Sundance, Toronto Release date: November 7
The buzziest film out of Sundance this year was this lyrical period piece from Bentley, co-writer of last year’s Sing Sing. (That film’s director, Greg Kwedar, co-wrote Train Dreams as well.) Netflix promptly bought it up, which means you shouldn’t expect box-office points, but this kind of movie is an awards play anyway. And Train Dreams could definitely be this year’s indie darling.
Director: Emma Tammi Stars: Josh Hutcherson, Matthew Lillard Release date: December 5
Two years ago, the first Five Nights at Freddy’s took me by surprise, and I dramatically underpriced it before it exploded for $137 million domestic on the backs of its legion of video-game fans. Not this year! If you want those box-office points, you’re gonna have to pay for them.
Director: Rian Johnson Stars: Daniel Craig, Josh O’Connor, Glenn Close Film festivals: Toronto Release date: December 12
Rian Johnson’s two previous Benoit Blanc mysteries were great fun, and both got Best Original Screenplay nominations … and nothing more. That might just be the level for these movies … unless cast members like Close or O’Connor make a particularly attractive case for a supporting performance campaign. There’s also the fact that, with Netflix distributing this one as it did with Glass Onion, you won’t be getting box-office points.
Director: Craig Brewer Stars: Hugh Jackman, Kate Hudson Release date: December 25
Jackman and Hudson — who both have put their musical skills to work onscreen before — play a husband-and-wife Neil Diamond tribute act. Brewer is a talented filmmaker (Hustle & Flow; Dolemite Is My Name) who could absolutely make a Christmas crowd-pleaser like this sing. Doesn’t this sound like a perfect holiday-weekend family-movie compromise? I’d also be willing to bet good money on Globe nominations for one or both of Jackman or Hudson.
➼ Box-office ineligible Director: Joseph Kosinski Stars: Brad Pitt, many cars Release date: Already released
After premiering at the end of June, Kosinski’s follow-up to Top Gun: Maverick has been a bit slept on for just how big a blockbuster it was (a quiet $600 million worldwide). You won’t be able to reap any points for those dollars, hence the bargain price. But this movie will certainly contend for at least some of the technical Oscars come year end.
Director: Kate Winslet Stars: Kate Winslet, Toni Collette, Andrea Riseborough Release date: December 12
Oscar winner Kate Winslet makes her directorial debut with this story of four adult siblings who have to rally around their ailing mother at Christmastime. A star as big as Winslet having her first go at directing a movie is always going to be a big deal, and Netflix releasing this at Christmastime (it hits the platform on Christmas Eve) indicates that it thinks it will be a crowd-pleaser.
Director: Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans Stars: Arden Cho, Ahn Hyo-seop, May Hong, Ji-young Yoo Release date: Already released
Netflix’s big success story of this year so far has been how well it’s done to ride the wave of KPop Demon Hunters. The songs are hits, the sing-along version of the movie was No. 1 at the box office, and it’s probably going to be a major contender for the Oscars for Best Song and Best Animated Feature.
Director: Mary Bronstein Stars: Rose Byrne, Conan O’Brien, Danielle Macdonald Film festivals: Sundance, Berlin, Toronto, New York Release date: October 10
Byrne won the lead acting prize at the Berlin International Film Festival earlier this year, which if nothing else is an indicator of just how impactful her performance is as a mother well past the end of her rope. There’s a pretty wide range of outcomes for this one, but look to the indie awards to give this movie some early points.
Director: Richard Linklater Stars: Ethan Hawke, Andrew Scott, Margaret Qualley Film festivals: Berlin, Toronto, New York Release date: October 17
Ethan Hawke reteams with Linklater for this biopic of famed songwriter Lorenz Hart, who faces one long night of reckoning after the opening of his ex-professional-partner’s musical Oklahoma! Andrew Scott’s performance as Richard Rodgers won a prize at Berlin, and you have to figure one of these years, Scott is going to break through with an Oscar nomination.
Director: Lynne Ramsay Stars: Jennifer Lawrence, Robert Pattinson Film festivals: Cannes Release date: November 7
Lynne Ramsay has been a critics’ darling her whole career, but that’s never translated into mainstream appreciation. But she’s never worked with Jennifer Lawrence before, either. The film’s Cannes reception was a bit inscrutable, but Lawrence playing a young mother battling psychosis is a tempting bit of awards bait.
Director: Edgar Wright Stars: Glen Powell, Josh Brolin Release date: November 7
An adaptation of the Stephen King novel and a remake of the Arnold Schwarzenegger film, The Running Man looks to be a great showcase for Glen Powell’s ever-blossoming star power, as well as a get-right opportunity for Edgar Wright after Last Night in Soho disappointed.
Director: James L. Brooks Stars: Emma Mackey, Jamie Lee Curtis Release date: December 12
The legendary James L. Brooks hasn’t directed a movie since 2010’s disappointing How Do You Know. Fifteen years later, Brooks is back with a story about a young idealist trying to balance a professional life in politics with her wacky family. Whether Brooks can recapture the magic of Broadcast News and Terms of Endearment is one of this fall’s big questions.
Popcorn emoji (🍿) denotes a film that is eligible for box-office points based on its release date.
Anaconda $5 🍿 Him $5 🍿 Gabby’s Dollhouse: The Movie $5 🍿 Now You See Me: Now You Don’t $5 🍿 The Housemaid $5 🍿 Zero A.D. $5 🍿 Dust Bunny $3 🍿 Regretting You $3 🍿 Sisu 2 $3 🍿 Soul on Fire $3 🍿 Eternity $2 🍿 Good Fortune $2 🍿 Trap House $2 🍿
Black Phone 2 $5 🍿 Keeper $5 🍿 The Strangers — Chapter 2 $5 🍿 Bone Lake $2 🍿 Shelby Oaks $2 🍿 Silent Night, Deadly Night $1 🍿
Anemone $5 🍿 A Private Life $5 🍿 Eleanor the Great $5 🍿 Father, Mother, Sister, Brother $5 🍿 Hedda $5 🍿 No Other Choice $5 🍿 Peter Hujar’s Day $5 🍿 The Lost Bus $5 The Mastermind $5 🍿 The Secret Agent $5 🍿 The Testament of Ann Lee $5 🍿 Christy $5 🍿
A Big Bold Beautiful Journey $5 Black Bag $5 Eddington $5 Highest 2 Lowest $5 Materialists $5 Nouvelle Vague $5 🍿 Pillion $5 🍿 The History of Sound $5 The Life of Chuck $5 Caught Stealing $3 Friendship $3 Misericordia $3 Sorry, Baby $3 Steve $3 🍿 Dead Man’s Wire $3 🍿 Cloud $2 Eephus $2 Pavements $2 Splitsville $2 On Swift Horses $1 Preparation for the Next Life $1 Sacramento $1 The Friend $1
Captain America: Brave New World $3 The Monkey $3 Honey Don’t! $3 One of Them Days $2 The Naked Gun $3 The Phoenician Scheme $3 Weapons $3 Drop $2 Presence $2 The Old Guard 2 $2
28 Years Later $5 A Minecraft Movie $5 How to Train Your Dragon $5 Lilo & Stitch $5 Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning $5 Superman $5 Mickey 17 $3 Warfare $3 Thunderbolts $3 The Fantastic Four: First Steps $3 Jurassic World Rebirth $3 The Long Walk $3 100 Nights of Hero $2 🍿
Predators $5 Come See Me in the Good Light $3 🍿 Cover-Up $2 🍿 Sally $3 2000 Meters to Andriivka $2 Diane Warren: Relentless $2 Prime Minister $2 Selena Y Los Dinos $2 🍿 The Alabama Solution $2 🍿 The Perfect Neighbor $2 🍿 Apocalypse in the Tropics $1 Deaf President Now! $1 Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore $1 Orwell: 2 + 2 = 5 $1 🍿 The Voice of Hind Rajab $1 🍿 Zodiac Killer Project $1 🍿 Architecton $1
Elio$5 The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants $5 🍿 Arco $3 🍿 Ne Zha II $3 Scarlet $3 🍿 A Magnificent Life $2 🍿 Dog Man $2 In Your Dreams $2 🍿 Smurfs $2 The Bad Guys 2 $2 The Twits $2 🍿 Pets on a Train $1 🍿
Caught by the Tides $3 Sound of Falling $3 🍿 Sirāt $3 🍿 Parthenope $2 On Becoming a Guinea Fowl $2 The President’s Cake $2 🍿 Left-Handed Girl $2 🍿
Couture $2 🍿 In the Hand of Dante $2 🍿 Last Days $2 🍿 Late Fame $2 🍿 Rebuilding $2 🍿 Atropia $1 🍿 Love Me $1 Lurker $1 Plainclothes $1 Poetic License $1 🍿 Relay $1 Rose of Nevada $1 🍿 Sacrifice $1 🍿 The Captive $1 🍿 The Christophers $1 🍿 The Thing With Feathers $1 🍿 Tuner $1 🍿
Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale $3 Nirvana the Band the Show the Movie $3 The Ballad of Wallis Island $3 The Man With the Bag $3 🍿 The Roses $3 Ballerina $2 Hurry Up Tomorrow $2 Snow White $2 The Accountant 2 $2 The Legend of Ochi $2 The Wedding Banquet $2 Alto Knights $1 Bring Her Back $1 Companion $1 Death of a Unicorn $1 Echo Valley $1 Fountain of Youth $1 Freakier Friday $1 Havoc $1 I Know What You Did Last Summer $1 I Wish You All The Best $1 🍿 Magic Farm $1 M3GAN 2.0 $1 Nobody 2 $1 Novocaine $1 Opus $1 Sarah’s Oil $1 🍿 Spinal Tap II: The End Continues $1 Straw $1 The Assessment $1 The Conjuring: Last Rites $1 The Electric State $1 The Surfer $1 The Thursday Murder Club $1 Wolf Man $1 The Woman in the Yard $1
Oh. What. Fun. $3 🍿 All of You $1 🍿 Swiped $1 🍿 Ruth & Boaz $1 🍿 The Woman in Cabin 10 $1 🍿
Is this how ESPN, Fox, and Warner Bros. Discovery feel? Photo: GeorgePeters/Getty Images
Huddle up, y’all. There’s been a hiccup in the launch of Venu, the planned sports streaming bundle from three heavy hitters in the media landscape. Per CNN, a judge has delayed Venu’s launch by granting FuboTV’s request for a preliminary injunction against the joint venture by Fox, Warner Bros. Discovery, and the Walt Disney Company (you might see some reports swap ESPN into that last slot; ESPN is majority-owned by Disney). Fubo filed a lawsuit two weeks after Venu was announced back in February, arguing that the bundle would violate antitrust laws and cause consumers to “face irreparable harm in the absence of an injunction.” On Friday, a New York district judge ruled that Fubo would likely succeed in proving those claims in trial. Unsurprisingly, Fox, Disney, and Warner Bros. Discovery said they plan to appeal, claiming that “Venu Sports is a pro-competitive option that aims to enhance consumer choice by reaching a segment of viewers who currently are not served by existing subscription options.” As we previously reported, Venu promised to offer its subscribers a dizzying amount of sports coverage through access to all ESPN channels, ESPN+, ABC, FOX, TNT, TBS, and TruTV … plus programs like 30 for 30 via the ESPN library. Venu was originally set to debut this fall with a locked-in “launch price” of $42.99 per month for one year, but the Associated Press now reports that the launch will likely be pushed until at least 2025.
According to Courthouse News, Fubo said in its filing that it has long wanted to launch a sports-only streaming service, but that it faced difficulties because networks allegedly charged unfairly high licensing costs and forced bundles with entertainment channels that sports fans don’t want. “Today’s ruling is a victory not only for Fubo but also for consumers,” David Gandler, Fubo co-founder and chief executive, said in a statement. “This decision will help ensure that consumers have access to a more competitive marketplace with multiple sports streaming options.” Keep in mind, though, that a preliminary injunction is basically just a timeout. In other words, Friday’s decision is a temporary delay, not a permanent block. A trial date for the antitrust lawsuit has yet to be set. So you’ve got some time to decide, sports fans — are you Team Fubo or not?
