The Official 2025 Oscars Preview (Reminder To Get Your Ballots In!!)

#309: My 2025 Oscars Ballot, and where to watch all the Best Picture nominees

Edition 309:

Hey movie lovers!

This week: My official Oscars ballot, and a final call for you all to get yours in before the ceremony this Sunday! Plus, where to stream all of the Best Picture nominees. And I give a little preview of my highest-paid actors list on Forbes. In this week’s “Trailer Watch,” we’re getting weird with Alicia Vikander.

The 97th Academy Awards

Hey all! “Hollywood’s biggest night” is Sunday, and it’s something like this newsletter’s Super Bowl.

With that in mind, if you haven’t already, now is the time to join my Oscars Picks Pool. It’s free-to-enter, with a winner-take-all cash prize (supplied by me) of $2 times total number of entries. So get all your friends to join to juice the pot!

Enter your Oscars ballot here: https://forms.gle/HrBshp7Xi9hKK9mS7

I’ll drop my own Oscars ballot at the bottom, but first I wanted to give you all a handy primer on where to stream all of the movies that will be mentioned on Sunday night. Unlike the past couple years, most of these movies haven’t hit a streaming service yet — I realize this is somewhat annoying, but I actually like it and think it’s healthy for the industry. Hopefully some of these movies get a theatrical or VOD bump from their Oscars attention.

If you want my own personal recommendations, here’s how I’d rank the Best Picture nominees in terms of which you should watch before the ceremony:

**I haven’t seen I’m Still Here yet, because it’s very hard to find in the United States, but I just have to imagine (and hope) it’s at least better than Emilia Perez.

1. Conclave - Peacock

2. Anora - $ VOD

3. Dune: Part Two - Netflix, Max

4. The Substance - MUBI (or $ VOD)

5. Nickel Boys - MGM+ (or $ VOD)

6. The Brutalist - $ VOD (still in theaters)

7. A Complete Unknown - $ VOD

8. Wicked - $ VOD (still in theaters)

9. I’m Still Here - N/A (some theaters)

10. Emilia Perez - Netflix

And drum roll please …. here’s my official Oscars ballot!

The Best Picture race is wide open this year, but for some reason I’ve been riding with The Brutalist since the beginning of the year, and I’m not turning back now. Give me Adrien Brody over Timmy, and four total trophies, which would make it the most awarded movie in a really split year.

Last year I got 17 of 23 categories correct, tied for third in our pool, but this year I’m coming for it all!

Best Original Screenplay: Anora

Best Adapted Screenplay: Conclave

Best Visual Effects: Dune: Part Two

Best Sound: Dune: Part Two

Best Production Design: Nosferatu

Best Original Score: The Brutalist

Best Original Song: "The Journey" - Diane Warren (Six Triple Eight)

Best Makeup and Hairstyling: The Substance

Best Live Action Short Film: The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent

Best International Feature: Emilia Perez (France)

Best Film Editing: Conclave

Best Documentary Short: I Am Ready, Warden

Best Documentary Feature: No Other Land

Best Costume Design: Wicked

Best Cinematography: The Brutalist

Best Animated Short Film: Yuck!

Best Animated Feature: The Wild Robot

Best Actress in a Supporting Role: Zoe Saldaña - Emilia Perez

Best Actor in a Supporting Role: Kieran Culkin - A Real Pain

Best Actress in a Leading Role: Demi Moore - The Substance

Best Actor in a Leading Role: Adrien Brody - The Brutalist

Best Director: Sean Baker - Anora

Best Picture: The Brutalist

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The Highest-Paid Actors Of 2024

Last year, I had two different newsletter subscribers send me TikTok videos aggregating this list and saying something like, “thought you would find this interesting.” To which I said yes, in fact, so interesting that I’m the one who made the list in the first place! (Gotta love the internet aggregators…)

I don’t normally plug my Forbes work in this Friday newsletter, but in this case it overlaps so closely with the interests of people who subscribe here that I think you all will forgive me the self-indulgence.

When telling friends about this work project, I always start by putting it back on them: “If someone asked you to find out who the highest-paid actors were, how would you do it?”

Their first instinct is to Google search it…only to realize the info isn’t out there, or is very wrong. Second instinct, ask the person? Oh, ok, let me get Brad Pitt on the phone real fast… Third instinct, ask them through their reps. As if they’d tell me! (I’ve been fielding “you’re so wrong!” emails from them all week after sending them my finished estimates).

Ultimately, it’s a long and hard process involving dozens of off-the-record and on-background conversations with agents, managers, lawyers, executives and others around the entertainment industry who compromise the “whisper network,” with the hopes that, in the aggregate, you can form estimates that you’re reasonably confident in. That’s the place I got to with my top 20.

If you all are curious or have specific questions about how this list came together, reply to this email and ask me! I’ll be answering them all weekend.

Full list: https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattcraig/2025/02/28/the-highest-paid-actors-of-2024

Here’s a sneak peak of the top five:

1. Dwayne Johnson: $88 million ($103 million gross)

2. Ryan Reynolds: $85 million ($100 million gross)

3. Kevin Hart: $81 million ($108 million gross)

4. Jerry Seinfeld: $60 million ($70 million gross)

5. Hugh Jackman: $50 million ($66 million gross)

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Trailer Watch: The Assessment

Whenever you see a trailer for something this … weird, and yet this confident, there’s always the potential for it to be special. And how else would it have convinced Alicia Vikander (an Oscar winner!), Elizabeth Olson and Himesh Patel to star?

The more likely outcome is that it’s just way to strange and out there — set in a dystopian future where parenthood is strictly controlled, and Vikander is evaluating the couple for suitability, it appears all hell breaks loose. It’s the kind of wacky experiment I’ll always take a chance on.