A guide to Hollywood’s biggest races

As the 2024 Oscar nominees gathered, one by one, on the stage of the Beverly Hilton ballroom on a sunny Monday afternoon, it took a while to get everyone assembled and in position for the annual class photo. Those included in the ritual found ways, of course, to pass the time. Seated up front, Christopher Nolan extended his arm one chair over to give fellow directing nominee Martin Scorsese a handshake, with Lily Gladstone politely beaming as she sat between them. Mark Ruffalo pulled Barbie songwriter Finneas O’Connell and Maestro producer Kristie Macosko Krieger in for a selfie. Ryan Gosling caught up with his former co-star Emma Stone and his Barbie D.P. Rodrigo Prieto. Diane Warren and Sterling K. Brown got chummy way up in the back corner.

\

This is the only time of year when all of the year’s Oscar nominees—at least those who can attend; Danielle Brooks, for instance, couldn’t get cleared to leave Minecraft production in New Zealand—mingle in the same room before the big show. It’s hard not to get swept up in the camaraderie. There's joy even in Academy President Janet Yang’s annual remarks, which begin as a series of effusive congratulations before she offers some relatively firm tips about how to give a great winner’s speech—in 45 seconds or less. (This year, she even showed Javier Bardem’s full, spirited 2008 remarks after winning for No Country for Old Men, and then exclaimed, “Only 37 seconds!”) The vibe is warm, communal, dare I say relaxed—odd, since it marks the peak of phase-two campaigning.

For the lucky few, this means celebrating with a whole bunch of cast and crew. Showcasing the Academy’s major international expansion, this particular event felt thrillingly global. The Zone of Interest’s Polish producer Ewa Puszczyńska told me that she’d never attended this event before, unable to when she was part of the team behind international contender Cold War, and was thrilled to experience it with her best-picture nominee. Artisans from Japan’s Godzilla v Kong, Spain’s Society of the Snow, and France’s Anatomy of a Fall were well-represented too—many of them first-timers. And speaking of Academy shifts, the branch Governors in the room were buzzing about the recent creation of a long overdue casting Oscar. “I couldn’t believe it—I couldn’t fucking believe it,” governor of the Casting branch Richard Hicks told me. “It was like getting past an iceberg, but we did it.”

While Barbie’s haul of eight nominations disappointed some fans, the film undeniably felt like the room’s center of gravity, with Greta Gerwig and her cast—yes, including Margot Robbie, nominated as a producer—emerging as the resident rock stars of the 2024 class. They were only rivaled, in fact, by a key cast member of Anatomy of a Fall—Messi, the dog who plays Snoop in the lauded French drama. So when Ryan Gosling and America Ferrera separately asked for a little 1:1 time with the pup? There was nowhere else to look. 

Other films weren’t so widely represented, inevitably. “We’re lost!” first-time nominee Samy Burch joked beside her husband and fellow nominee Alex Mechanik. “We don’t know where to go!” (They jointly devised the story for May December, for which Burch’s script is nominated.) I got to know Burch on the trail last fall, as she was darting from Hollywood event to event in tow with the likes of Todd Haynes, Julianne Moore, and Charles Melton; that film wasn’t widely embraced by the Academy, however, and so Burch and Mechanik are the last contenders standing for that campaign. Later on, as Burch walked toward the stage after her name was called, she gave Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos an impassioned high-five. 

This luncheon ostensibly plays an equal-opportunity game, with each nominee’s name said exactly once and no winners announced. But this is the Oscars, so all eyes are still subtly on who’s up and who’s down. At this particular event, such momentum tends to be measured in terms of applause volume. The whole routine can get a bit silly, but regular attendees will tell you it’s not a meaningless barometer, either. Last year, Everything Everywhere All at Once found the loudest embrace, and the year before that, it was CODA. By my hopefully objective ears, Gerwig and Robbie found the most sustained love as they took their spot on stage, which shouldn’t be ignored following Barbie's bumpy showing in the nominations. Is this evidence of an incoming surge? Too early to call, but notable, even if Oppenheimer still feels like a very heavy favorite. Others meeting an especially friendly greeting included Prieto, Stone, Sterling K. Brown, Cillian Murphy, Paul Giamatti, Jon Batiste, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Lily Gladstone, and in a rousing closer, Robert Downey Jr. It’s no coincidence many of those names are front-runners to win. But for today, at least, the nominees could rest assured that everyone got their moment. Tomorrow, the competition resumes.