2015 Oscar Predictions: Updating Field as Eastwood’s ‘Sniper’ Enters Race, Plus First Foreign Contenders

By Brad Brevet
ON

2015 Oscar Predictions: Updating Field as Eastwood's 'Sniper' Enters Race

Last night we learned Warner Bros. was entering Clint Eastwood‘s American Sniper into the Oscar race, giving the film a limited Christmas Day release before going wide in mid-January. Well, that means I needed to swoop over and do a little updating to my list of Oscar predictions, specifically in the Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor and Best Adapted Screenplay categories, and while Sniper didn’t actually make my list of nominees in any one of those categories, there was some shifting up and down of my current selection of nominees.

Here’s how each of those categories now look at the top:

Best Picture

  1. Unbroken
  2. Wild
  3. Birdman
  4. Foxcatcher
  5. Gone Girl
  6. Boyhood
  7. Interstellar
  8. A Most Violent Year
  9. Selma

Best Director

  1. Bennett Miller (Foxcatcher)
  2. Angelina Jolie (Unbroken)
  3. Alejandro González Iñárritu (Birdman)
  4. David Fincher (Gone Girl)
  5. Richard Linklater (Boyhood)

Best Actor

  1. Michael Keaton (Birdman)
  2. Steve Carell (Foxcatcher)
  3. Timothy Spall (Mr. Turner)
  4. Miles Teller (Whiplash)
  5. Ben Affleck (Gone Girl)

Best Adapted Screenplay

  1. Joel Coen, Ethan Coen, Richard LaGravenese, William Nicholson (Unbroken)
  2. Gillian Flynn (Gone Girl)
  3. Nick Hornby (Wild)
  4. E. Max Frye and Dan Futterman (Foxcatcher)
  5. James Lapine (Into the Woods)

You can check the full field of contenders for each category above and all the others I’ve started predicting so far right here, but before you go I’ve also started tracking this year’s field of Foreign Language Contenders as the first three movies submitted for this year’s Best Foreign Language race have been revealed.

Winter Sleep wins Cannes Palme d'Or

Top dog now is probably this Turkey’s submission and this year’s Cannes Palme d’Or winner, Nuri Bilge Ceylan‘s Winter Sleep, and I’ve heard nothing but good things about Poland’s submission, Pawel Pawlikowski‘s Ida.

Hungary has also submit Cannes Un Certain Regard winner, Kornél Mundruczó‘s White God, which Magnolia Pictures has already picked up for distribution.

I have listed the three movies once again below, but you can keep track of all of this year’s Foreign Language submissions right here.

  • Hungary, White God (dir. Kornél Mundruczó)
  • Poland, Ida (dir. Pawel Pawlikowski)
  • Turkey, Winter Sleep (dir. Nuri Bilge Ceylan)