Nominations voting is from January 8-12, 2025, with official Oscar nominations announced January 17, 2025. Final voting is February 11-18, 2025. And finally, the 97th Oscars telecast will be broadcast on Sunday, March 2, and air live on ABC at 7 p.m. ET/ 4 p.m. PT. We update our picks throughout awards season, so keep checking IndieWire for all our 2025 Oscar predictions.
The State of the Race
“Dune: Part Two” (Warner Bros.) is the early Best Editing favorite and is joined by such standouts as “Civil War” (A24), “Challengers” (Amazon MGM Studios), “Hit Man” (Netflix), and “Kinds of Kindness” (Searchlight Pictures). The festival season will see more contenders premiere, including “Blitz” (Apple TV+), “Conclave” (Focus Features), “Queer” (TBA), “Joker: Folie à Deux” (Warner Bros.), “The Nickel Boys” (Amazon MGM Studios), and “The Piano Lesson” (Netflix).
Other fall/holiday contenders include “Gladiator II” (Paramount), “Megalopolis” (Lionsgate), “Nosferatu” (Focus Features), “A Complete Unknown” (Searchlight Pictures), and “Wicked” (Universal).
In “Dune: Part Two,” Oscar-winning editor Joe Walker (“Dune”) had a lot more action to deal with in expanding Denis Villeneuve’s sci-fi epic. It became a high-octane “Lawrence of Arabia” in space: a love story and political adventure in which Paul’s (Timothée Chalamet) would-be messiah leads the nomadic Fremen in battle on Arrakis, which leads to a holy war. Indeed, the battles demanded a faster pace, more compression of time, and less exposition. Cutting “Part Two” was almost like riding the sandworm into the heat of battle as a desert guerilla fighter. Walker told IndieWire that it was “bignormous.”
Alex Garland’s “Civil War” is a surreal road trip for four journalists (Kirsten Dunst, Wagner Moura, Cailee Spaeny, and Stephen McKinley Henderson) through the dystopian nightmare of guerilla warfare that rips the country apart and culminates with the final assault on D.C. and the White House. Editor Jake Roberts had a kinetic, doc-like film to work with, shot in sequence, which the director called “free jazz.“ One of the most effective aspects was the editor’s handling of still photography from the characters played by Dunst (shooting digital along with cinematographer Rob Hardly) and Spaeny (shooting analog with real film in her camera).
With “Challengers,” director Luca Guadagnino tackles the competitive nature of tennis as a love triangle involving former tennis prodigy-turned-coach Zendaya, her husband and slumping tennis champ Mike Faist, and low-circuit tennis player Josh O’Connor, who is her ex-lover and his former best friend. Editor Marco Costa juxtaposes the relationships and rivalries in non-linear fashion across 13 years, with the matches reflecting their changing emotional and personal dynamics. The final set between the former friends is comprised of slow-motion and fast cuts, becoming louder and more intense but never losing sight of Zendaya’s part in the triangle.
Richard Linklater’s “Hit Man” comedy finds Glen Powell as the titular assassin who’s really a nerdy philosophy professor from New Orleans in disguise, helping the police department during sting operations. The director’s go-to editor, Sandra Adair, navigates the twists and turns without getting lost in pacing and keeps the focus on Powell. A highlight is the disguise scenes, which got moved around editorially to better convey a sense of time and Powell’s growing assurance in his dangerous role.
For Yorgos Lanthimos’ “Kinds of Kindness” black comedy anthology, go-to editor Yorgos Mavropsaridis got to play with the clash between authoritarian control and free will, set in alternate realities, and with an ensemble cast led by Jesse Plemons, Emma Stone, and Willem Dafoe. Shot in sequence on the edge of New Orleans, the editor treated each part individually yet created a sense of progression by expanding the scope to encompass larger social settings. Everything was built around surprise and shock in “The Death of R.M.F.,” “R.M.F. Is Flying,” and “R.M.F. Eats a Sandwich.”
“Emilia Pérez” (Netflix), the crime comedy from Jacques Audiard, is a surreal blend of family drama, narcotics thriller, and musical. It stars Zoe Saldaña as a disgruntled lawyer who assists the titular Mexican cartel leader (Karla Sofía Gascón) in undergoing sex reassignment surgery to evade capture and affirm her gender. Editor Juliette Welfling finds the proper operatic rhythm and pacing to accommodate the different stylistic mixtures.
“Conclave,” Edward Berger’s follow-up to “All Quiet on the Western Front,” is a psychological thriller in which Ralph Fiennes’ Cardinal searches for a successor to the deceased Pope, who harbored a dark secret. Editor Nick Evans handles the slow burn of all the claustrophobic machinations of selecting a Pope set in a sequestered enclave in the Vatican, moving the mystery along in the confined setting, with the added drama concerning a crisis of faith.
“Nosferatu,” director Robert Eggers’ passion project, reworks the legendary silent vampire film by F.W. Murnau with Bill Skarsgård as the infamous Count Orlok, Lily-Rose Depp as Ellen Hutter, and Nicholas Hoult as her husband. Editor Louise Ford (“The Northman”) handles the chills and thrills of roving from 19th-century London to a Gothic castle, where the couple is haunted by dreams that could be harbingers of what’s to come, and peek-a-boo with the elusive vampire, lurking in the shadows.
As for the rest: “Megalopolis,” Francis Ford Coppola’s $120 million epic sci-fi passion project drawing parallels between the fall of Rome and the collapse of America, is set in a New York-like metropolis called New Rome. After an accident destroys the decaying city, an architect (Adam Driver) with the power to control time attempts to rebuild it as a utopia through his miracle-building material, Megalon, but is met with resistance from the old guard. Glen Scantlebury and Cam McLauchlin edit the operatic spectacle.
“Blitz,” by British director Steve McQueen, concerns Londoners during the Blitz of World War II and stars Saoirse Ronan, Elliott Heffernan, and singer/songwriter Paul Weller in his acting debut. It centers on youngster Heffernan, sent to the countryside for safekeeping, who’s determined to reunite with his mother (Ronan) and grandfather (Weller) at their home in London. Navigating this adventure with intimacy and scope is editor Peter Sciberras (“The Power of the Dog”).
“The Piano Lesson,” Malcolm Washington’s adaption of the August Wilson play starring John David Washington and Samuel L. Jackson, explores the lives of the Charles family in Depression-era 1936 Pittsburgh and the importance of the cherished family heirloom: a piano documenting the family history through carvings made by their enslaved ancestor. Editor Leslie Jones (“Inherent Vice”) cuts the ensemble drama, focusing on the theme of legacy, in which arguments ensue between the brother (Washington) and sister (Danielle Deadwyler), who have different ideas about what to do with the piano.
“Queer,” Guadagnino’s much-anticipated adaptation of William S. Burroughs’ semi-autobiographical novella about disconnected gay American expatriates in post-World War II Mexico City, finds heroin user William Lee (Daniel Craig) falling for the much younger and enigmatic Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey) on an odyssey filled with psychedelic surrealism and great tenderness that ultimately takes them to the Ecuadorian jungle. Editor Costa definitely has many layers to explore here.
“Joker: Folie à Deux,” Todd Phillips’ musical-thriller, picks up with Joker Joaquin Phoenix striking up a romance with Lady Gaga’s therapist, Harley Quinn, while incarcerated in Arkham Asylum. “Joker” editor Jeff Groth returns to incorporate both the thriller aspect and the added dimension of their shared delusions through musical madness.
In “Wicked,” Jon Chu’s adaptation of the Broadway musical by Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman, we get the unlikely friendship between Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo), a misunderstood girl with green skin, and the popular Galinda (Ariana Grande), who eventually become the Wicked Witch of the West and Glinda the Good. Chu’s go-to editor Myron Kerstein handles the narrative flow of the musical spectacle from their meeting at the magical Shiz University in the Land of Oz to their crucial encounter with the Wizard (Jeff Goldblum).
“The Nickel Boys,” RaMell Ross’ adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, explores two Black teenagers (Ethan Herisse and Brandon Wilson) who become wards of a barbaric juvenile reform school in Jim Crow–era Florida. Editor Nicholas Monsour (“Nope”) navigates their friendship amidst the horrors of the school and its corrupt administrators.
“Saturday Night,” from director Jason Reitman, chronicles the lead-up to the October 11, 1975, premiere of NBC’s iconic late-night sketch comedy show, starring Gabriel LaBelle (“The Fabelmans”) as “SNL” creator/producer Lorne Michaels. Reitman’s go-to editors, Nathan Orloff and Shane Reid, handle the chaotic behind-the-scenes taping of a comic revolution that almost wasn’t, led by an ensemble cast that includes Willem Dafoe, Matthew Rhys, Nicholas Braun, Rachel Sennott, and Cooper Hoffman.
“Gladiator II,” Ridley Scott’s sequel to his Oscar winner, takes place two decades later as the Roman Empire continues to implode. Cut by go-to editors Claire Simpson and Sam Restivo, the sequel concerns Lucius (Paul Mescal), the former heir to the Empire, forced to enter the Colosseum as a ruthless gladiator. Denzel Washington’s Macrinus, a former slave-turned-merchant, uses Lucius as part of his power play by pitting him against Pedro Pascal’s Roman general, Marcus Acacius, in the arena.
“A Complete Unknown” (Searchlight Pictures), James Mangold’s Bob Dylan biopic starring Timothée Chalamet and edited by Andrew Buckland, chronicles the folk star’s rise in New York’s West Village in 1961 to the controversial 1965 Newport Folk Festival, where he turned electric.
Potential nominees are listed in alphabetical order; no film will be deemed a frontrunner until we have seen it.
Frontrunners
“Challengers”
“Civil War”
“Dune: Part Two”
“Hit Man”
“Kinds of Kindness”
Contenders
“Blitz”
“A Complete Unknown”
“Conclave”
“Emilia Pérez”
“Gladiator II”
“Joker: Folie à Deux”
“Megalopolis”
“Nosferatu”
“The Nickel Boys”
“The Piano Lesson”
“Queer”
“Saturday Night”
“Wicked”
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