Watch out, Sinners, The Odyssey is coming for your Oscar nomination record.
Christopher Nolan‘s exhilarating spin on Homer’s English-lit staple, with an A-list cast, eye-popping visuals, and a surprisingly affecting story of love and loss, sails into theaters today on its inevitable voyage to the 99th Academy Awards in March. That the film will contend for multiple statuettes is inarguable; it’s just a matter of how many.
Sinners holds the record of 16 Oscar nods, set earlier this year. Nolan’s last film, Oppenheimer, scored 13, making it his most-nominated feature to date. Here, we chart out the course Odysseus and crew need to navigate to match — or exceed — Ryan Coogler and his blues-loving bloodsuckers.
Best Picture
Sight unseen, The Odyssey jumped to the top of the Gold Derby leaderboard as soon as we began tracking odds for the 2027 Oscars. Now that critics have weighed in with near-universal acclaim — its initial 96% on Rotten Tomatoes and 88 rating on Metacritic are the best of Nolan’s vaunted career, even surpassing Oppenheimer — The Odyssey is officially the juggernaut all other contenders will be judged against.
Three years ago, when Nolan unleashed Oppenheimer, the film instantly established itself as the Best Picture front-runner and led the Oscar race wire to wire, ultimately cashing in seven of its 13 nominations. Until further notice, The Odyssey is our No. 1.
Best Director
The Odyssey is the work of a filmmaker at the top of his game and Nolan is undeniably deserving of his top position among directors.
Best Director
1.
Christopher Nolan
The Odyssey
2.
Alejandro G. Inarritu
Digger
3.
Martin McDonagh
Wild Horse Nine
4.
Javier Ambrossi, Javier Calvo
La Bola Negra
5.
Best Actor
The acting categories will make or break The Odyssey‘s chances at toppling the Sinners record. While the Gold Derby editors uniformly believe that Nolan’s film will have smooth sailing in the picture, directing, and craft categories, there is some disagreement about the merits of the film’s many thespians. That uncertainty extends to our experts and users, who rank The Odyssey‘s ensemble all over the map ahead of the film’s opening.
Matt Damon sits in a precarious fifth place pre-release, but as the movie’s standard-bearer, we expect him to secure his third Best Actor nod, following 1997’s Good Will Hunting and 2015’s The Martian. (He also has a Best Supporting Actor mention for 2009’s Invictus.)
Best Actor
1.
2.
John Malkovich
Wild Horse Nine
3.
Ryan Gosling
Project Hail Mary
4.
5.
Best Actress/Best Supporting Actress
We don’t envy the Oscar strategists at Universal when it comes to campaigning Anne Hathaway. There’s a compelling argument that she run as Best Actress for her role as Penelope; she easily clocks enough screen time to merit running in that category and could make a run at her second career nod in that category.
Right now, however, Supporting Actress is more wide open, and Gold Derby’s odds are favoring Hathaway with a No. 2 finish (which reflects our take on her six-movie slate this year), giving her the chance to add a bookend to the statuette she won for Les Misérables in 2013.
There is a huge caveat to her occupying a slot in the latter race, though; it would create a logjam for The Odyssey‘s truly supporting actresses, most notably Charlize Theron as Calypso and Samantha Morton as Circe. Both could squeeze into the supporting field if Hathaway goes lead; if not, we give the early edge to Morton, who our oddsmakers have at No. 10.
Best Supporting Actress
1.
Penelope Cruz
La Bola Negra
2.
Anne Hathaway
The Odyssey
3.
Mariana Di Girolamo
Wild Horse Nine
4.
5.
Parker Posey
Wild Horse Nine
Best Supporting Actor
Last year’s Oscar race saw One Battle After Another land both Sean Penn and Benicio Del Toro in this race. Don’t be surprised if there’s a repeat this time around with Tom Holland (currently No. 8 on the Gold Derby charts, but likely to spike once people see the film) as Odyssey’s dutiful son, Telemachus, and Robert Pattinson (No. 6) as Antinous, the most conniving of all Penelope’s suitors, both making the cut. The math doesn’t quite add up, but if there’s a dark-horse contender among the cast, it’s John Leguizamo (No. 14), doing some career-best work at Odysseus’ stalwart swineherd Eumaeus.
Best Supporting Actor
1.
2.
3.
Sam Rockwell
Wild Horse Nine
4.
Steve Buscemi
Wild Horse Nine
5.
6.
Robert Pattinson
The Odyssey
7.
8.
9.
10.
Mark Ruffalo
Being Heumann
Best Adapted Screenplay
Three of Nolan’s eight career nominations have come for screenwriting. There’s no reason he won’t collect another for adapting Emily Wilson’s heralded translation of the Homeric saga.
Crafts
Like Sinners, which tallied nominations in every craft category, from the nascent Best Casting to Best VFX, expect The Odyssey to stack below-the-line nods. Don’t be surprised if it goes 10-for-10.
Casting: The MAGA acolytes might disagree, but there’s no controversy in saying that this ensemble is one for the ages. So much so that we’ve had casting director John Papsidera penciled in for a nomination since before this category officially debuted at the 98th Academy Awards.
Cinematography: In the unlikely event you haven’t heard, Nolan and DP Hoyte van Hoytema shot the whole film using Imax cameras, inventing some technology along the way. The results are breathtaking, and van Hoytema will be well positioned to find a friend for his Oppenheimer Oscar.
Film Editing: Another frequent Nolan collaborator, Jennifer Lame, won for Oppenheimer and will be back in contention for The Odyssey in a category that is traditionally closely aligned with Best Picture.
Production Design: The Trojan Horse. The palace of Ithaca. The Cyclops cave. Ruth De Jong, who was nominated for Oppenheimer, has a good chance of winning for The Odyssey.
Costume Design: Ellen Mirojnick’s work on The Odyssey is next-level. Another Oppenheimer Oscar alum, she authored her own epic in this department, overseeing an army of 500-plus artisans working across nine countries to create 5,300 costumes.
Makeup and Hairstyling: Makeup designer Luisa Abel and hair designer Gloria Casny, both previous nominees, spent months researching historical looks to maintain authenticity and had to adhere to Nolan’s strict no-wig policy. Plus, they made a Cyclops.
Score: If he isn’t already, Ludwig Göransson is well on his way to becoming the millennial John Williams. Göransson is 3-for-3 in this category (Black Panther, Oppenheimer, Sinners), and with his use of ancient Greek vocal stylings and instruments like aulos and the lyre should notch him a fourth career nomination here.
Song: Outside of, say, an unexpected Sirens’ earworm, this is one category where we weren’t anticipating The Odyssey to be competitive ahead of our screening. But the end-credits cut, “When I’m Home,” can’t be ignored. Written by six-time Grammy winner Göransson, two-time Grammy winner James Blake, 10-time Grammy nominee Travis Scott (who, aptly enough, plays “the bard” in the film), and some wannabe tunesmith named Christopher Nolan — and performed by Blake, Scott, and Göransson (who is also a two-time nominee in this category) — the track is destined to be shortlisted. It’s not a stretch to say that Nolan could follow the path of fellow filmmaker Jacques Audiard, who shared the Best Song Oscar for contributing lyrics to “El Mal” from Emilia Pérez.
Sound: With several of the nominated Oppenheimer sound team back, expect The Odyssey, with an even more blockbuster scope, to be among the favorites in this category.
VFX: From Scylla and Charybdis to the Cyclops to Circe’s transformed captives, The Odyssey‘s effects work is not as flashy as likely contenders Project Hail Mary and Dune: Part Three, but just as Sinners‘ additive approach enabled it to lock down a nomination, The Odyssey‘s VFX crew should follow suit.
Total
If the extremely early Gold Derby prediction data pans out and The Odyssey scores nominations for picture, director, actor, supporting actor, supporting actress, and adapted screenplay, and then goes 10-for-10 in the craft categories, Nolan’s film would tie Sinners at 16. And if an extra performer (or two) sneaks into the supporting races, The Odyssey‘s name will be sung in the Academy record books for years to come.
‘The Odyssey’ cast guide: Every actor and the role they play
