99th Oscars Projections: Pre Fall Festivals Update

A Look, Just Before The Start Of The Fall Festivals, At The Best Picture Race Outlook For The 99th Academy Awards

Aug 21, 2026

Introduction

Summer is on its last legs, Labor Day weekend is around the corner, retail stores are already selling Halloween candy and decorations, and the Emmys are set to have their ceremony in just a few weeks. All of that means we’re about to enter the very early stages of awards season and the battle for those Oscars.

If Cannes was the draft and the summer blockbuster season was preseason workouts, then the fall film festivals are the preseason games. They allow studios to get a better sense of which films they should prioritize before hitting the ground running from October through January to campaign for those nominations.

Having your film play at a festival is incredibly important if you want to get into the Best Picture race. Since 2021, when the Academy expanded the lineup to a hard 10 nominees, no more than two or three films in each lineup have failed to screen at any film festival. The only major outlier was that first year under the hard-10 rule, when the pandemic was still affecting movie releases and four films got in without playing the festival circuit.

In 2022, only Avatar: The Way Of Water didn’t screen at a festival. In 2023, it was only Oppenheimer and Barbie. In 2024, only A Complete Unknown, Dune: Part Two, and Wicked missed the festival circuit, while last year only F1, Sinners, and One Battle After Another did the same.

Which means that if we assume The Odyssey and Project Hail Mary are already early locks for the lineup, then at best only one other non-festival film may get in, leaving seven other spots to be filled by movies that make appearances on the festival circuit.

The first major stop is Venice. It has famously highbrow tastes, but it has programmed at least two eventual Best Picture nominees every year in recent memory. Then comes Telluride, known for announcing its lineup literally at the last second and for giving attendees the chance to rub shoulders with major actors, directors, and industry insiders. Telluride has programmed as many as four eventual Best Picture nominees each time in recent years.

After that comes the Toronto International Film Festival, where at least two of the films that place for the Audience Award have made their way into the Oscar lineup in recent years, alongside several other eventual nominees that premiere or screen at the festival. Finally, there’s New York, which closes out the major leg of the fall festival circuit and has programmed at least three eventual Best Picture nominees each year in recent memory.

Going into the fall festivals, I’m locking in where I think the Best Picture race currently stands among 40 films that, at the moment, I can see varying paths for. I still believe The Odyssey is the movie to beat, and I continue to have La Bola Negra, Project Hail Mary, Wild Horse Nine, Elsinore, The Debut, Fjord, and Dune: Part Three in my predicted lineup.

However, Digger and The Social Reckoning have both fallen into my “on the bubble” tier following the lack of a festival appearance for either, along with reports of reshoots for the latter. I’m also starting to place some bets on secondary priorities from Neon and Searchlight Pictures, with All Of A Sudden and Behemoth! now gaining ground.

I should note that I’m extremely close, with each passing week, to pulling the trigger on movies like The Invite or Obsession and putting them into my predicted lineup. I just can’t quite do it yet. I need some clarity on how certain films actually play at the festivals before making that move.

As for the rest, you can see for yourself down below as my final chips placed before eyeballs finally start getting on these movies we’ve spent months speculating about. The next time I update the board, the lineup of 40 will be drastically cut down, and we’re going to truly start separating the pretenders from the contenders.

Until then, enjoy this moment right before the festival reactions come in, when the possibilities and potential makeup of the Best Picture lineup can still vary to such wild degrees.

Or, to be more crude about it...shit is about to get real.