2024 Oscar Predictions: BEST ACTOR (August)

A very strange and quiet period from July predictions to August even though we have virtually all of the fall festival lineups save Telluride. The top contenders still look the same, just moving the pieces around a bit.

Venice will have the world premieres of Michael Mann’s Ferrari with Adam Driver, David Fincher’s The Killer with Michael Fassbender and Yorgos Lanthimos’s Poor Things (where we’ll see if there’s a true male lead). Anthony Hopkins, already a two-time Best Actor winner, has two potential films in the running, Freud’s Last Session (which Sony Pictures Classics has but no festival presence) and One Life, about British humanitarian Nicholas Winton, who helped save hundreds of children from the Nazis on the eve of World War II, which has no distributor but is set for BFI London Festival.

We got the first teaser for Bradley Cooper’s Maestro this week and it didn’t come without a wave of online controversy over the actor-director-writer-producer’s choice of a prosthetic nose to play legendary composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein. So swift was the controversy that Bernstein’s own children responded with a multi-tweet thread condemnation not of Cooper but of the complaints over said proboscis. In the real world, and certainly Oscars’, it’s not likely to have a negative impact on him. The film, which is set to world premiere at the Venice Film Festival in two weeks (without its director and star present as Cooper is choosing to stand in solidarity with the ongoing WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes) then as a Gala Spotlight at the New York Film Festival in October.

A24 has been on a role in this category with four nominees in the last three seasons, including a nominee (Paul Mescal) and a winner (Brendan Fraser) this year. Does that bode well for Teo Yoo in Past Lives or Christian Friedel in The Zone of Interest? It could, both are among the highest rated films of the year but it’s going to take a very robust campaign this fall and winter for both or either of them.

Here are my 2024 Oscar predictions in Best Actor for August 2023.

1. Cillian Murphy – Oppenheimer (Universal Pictures) (▲)
2. Colman Domingo – Rustin (Netflix) (▼)
3. Bradley Cooper – Maestro (Netflix) (▼)
4. Leonardo DiCaprio – Killers of the Flower Moon (Apple Original Films/Paramount Pictures) (-)
5. Paul Giamatti – The Holdovers (Focus Features) (-)
6. David Strathairn – A Little Prayer (Sony Pictures Classics) (-)
7. Anthony Hopkins – Freud’s Last Session (Sony Pictures Classics) (-)
8. Joaquin Phoenix – Napoleon (Apple Original Films/Sony Pictures) (-)
9. Barry Keoghan – Saltburn (Amazon Studios) (-)
10.  Kingsley Ben-Adir – Bob Marley: One Love (Paramount Pictures) (-)

Next up: Matt Damon – Air (Amazon Studios), Adam Driver – Ferrari (NEON), Alden Ehrenreich – Fair Play (Netflix), Zac Efron – The Iron Claw (A24),  Michael Fassbender – The Killer (Netflix), Jamie Foxx – The Burial (Amazon Studios), Christian Friedel – The Zone of Interest (A24), Mads Mikkelsen – The Promised Land (Magnolia Pictures), Kôji Yakusho – Perfect Days (NEON), Teo Yoo – Past Lives (A24)

Other contenders and/or possible 2024 releases:

• Jay Baruchel – BlackBerry (IFC Films)
• Gael García Bernal – Cassandro (Amazon Studios)
• Demián Bichir – Without Blood (Fremantle)
• Austin Butler – The Bikeriders (20th Century Studios) – lead or supporting?
• Timothée Chalamet – Dune Part Two (Warner Bros)
• Timothée Chalamet – Wonka (Warner Bros)
• Paul Dano – Dumb Money (Sony Pictures)
• Jacob Elordi – Priscilla (A24)
• Michael Fassbender – Next Goal Wins (Searchlight Pictures)
• Rafael Federman – Society of the Snow (Netflix)
• Tom Hardy – The Bikeriders (20th Century Studios)
• Ed Harris – Long’s Day Journey Into Night (MGM)
• Kelvin Harrison Jr. – Chevalier (Searchlight Pictures)
• André Holland – The Actor (NEON)
• Paul Mescal – Foe (Amazon Studios)
• Benoît Magimel – The Pot au Feu/The Taste of Things (IFC Films)
• Wagner Moura – Civil War (A24)
• Josh O’Connor – La Chimera (NEON)
• Agustín Pardella – Society of the Snow (Netflix)
• Matias Recalt – Society of the Snow (Netflix)
• Mark Ruffalo – Poor Things (Searchlight Pictures)
• Adam Sandler – Spaceman (Netflix)
• Sebastian Stan – A Different Man (A24)
• LaKeith Stanfield – The Book of Clarence (Sony Pictures)
• Callum Turner – The Boys in the Boat (MGM)
• Ramy Youssef – Poor Things (Searchlight Pictures)

Lead or Supporting Dilemma: Riz Ahmed – Fingernails (Apple Original Films), Austin Butler – The Bikeriders (20th Century Studios), Christopher Abbott – Poor Things (Searchlight Pictures), Jacob Elordi – Priscilla (A24), Tom Hardy – The Bikeriders (20th Century Studios), Mark Ruffalo – Poor Things (Searchlight Pictures), Teo Yoo – Past Lives (A24), Ramy Youssef – Poor Things (Searchlight Pictures)Without U.S. distribution: Paul Bettany – The Collaboration (TBD), Ralph Fiennes – Conclave (TBD), Anthony Hopkins – One Life (TBD), George MacKay – The Beast (TBD), Pierre Niney – The Book of Solutions (TBD),  Jeremy Pope – The Collaboration (TBD), Aswan Reid – The New Boy (TBD), Peter Sarsgaard – Memory (TBD), Ben Whishaw – Limonov: The Ballad of Eddie (TBD)

Photo: See-Saw Films / Warner Bros. Pictures UK