Five Narratives That Could Swing the 2026 Awards Season

Matt Belloni (0:05)

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It is Tuesday, October 13th. It's shaping up to be quite an Oscar season. This week, with the end of the New York and London Film Festivals, nearly all of the major contenders have been shown publicly. Maybe except for Dune Part Three. Apologies to Fokker in Law and Avengers Doomsday. Probably not happening for awards. I've been checking out our friend Scott Feinberg's Predictions, and there are a ton of great movies this fall. Some interesting campaigns shaping up. I count 12 to 15 legitimate Best Picture contenders. A24 alone has four of them in The Invite, The Debut, Club Kid and the Elizabeth Holmes documentary. Yes, a documentary could get a Best Picture nomination. And all of them from the usual specialty films like Wild Horse 9 and Artificial and Elsinore to commercial hits like Project Hail Mary and Obsession and maybe even the Michael Jackson movie. A few foreign films like La Bola Negra, Fjord, maybe even Digger, the Tom Cruise financial debacle. Could that redeem itself with a couple of awards nominations? All these contenders seem to be in the shadow, of course, of The Odyssey from the reigning Oscar champ Christopher Nolan. So it's got to be the front runner, right? Or is he?

Lots of questions this season and lots of film podcasts talking about the movies and what's good and bad. We are not going to do that on The Town. We're talking about the campaigns, how the various teams behind these movies are positioning them and how they're planning to get them all the way to the finish line on Oscar night. For that, we've got our friend Kyle Buchanan here to discuss. He's the former awards columnist for The New York Times. He just left to start his own thing. So today it's the Oscar campaign narratives. The table is set. Let the jockeying begin. From The Ringer and Puck, I'm Matt Belloni, and this is The Town.

All right, we are here with Kyle Buchanan, formerly of The New York Times, now the host of the about to launch The Kyle Buchanan Show. Welcome back, Kyle. You and I, did you and I have the best seats at the Sony Classics Dinner at Toronto?

We had the adjacent to Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz seats.

Kyle Buchanan (3:51)

And then Isabel Hupear joined the table, don't forget.

Matt Belloni (3:54)

Oh, see, I went to see the Rocky movie. I don't believe I was there when that happened.

Kyle Buchanan (3:59)

Yeah.

Matt Belloni (4:00)

But yeah, you had the better seat, I'll be fair. You were literally sitting next to them. I was next to you.

Kyle Buchanan (4:06)

There's no bad seats when they're passing out as many free lamb chops as they do at that dinner.

If anybody thinks that we're bragging like truly like journalists going to the Sony Pictures Classics Dinner, we are like raccoons let loose at a five star restaurant. We are just grabbing all the food we can. It's not flattering.

Matt Belloni (4:27)

Not only that, it's sort of a celebrity petting zoo.

Kyle Buchanan (4:31)

It is.

Matt Belloni (4:31)

Where they make all the talent go to this gigantic dinner in Toronto and the media are sort of free to roam and take their bites as they see fit. So Craig was not at our table. Where were you, Craig?