Oscar Predictions: The Odyssey Leads Best Picture Race as NYFF Premieres Loom

Awards season is officially underway, and if the latest predictions are anything to go by, the Best Picture race already has a clear frontrunner — though history tells us these things rarely stay settled for long. According to TheWrap's updated Best Picture predictions column, published September 25, Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey sits at the very top of a crowded field of contenders, with festival season now winding down and the New York Film Festival set to deliver its annual batch of potential spoilers.

A Seven-Film Top Tier

The columnist's top seven reads like a who's-who of this year's auteur-driven heavyweights. The Odyssey leads the pack, followed in order by Wild Horse Nine, La Bola Negra, Dune: Part Three, I Play Rocky, Fjord, and Project Hail Mary. It's a striking lineup: an epic mythological adaptation, a genre-defying space epic, a buzzy TIFF crowdpleaser, and a Dune sequel that closed out one of the biggest franchises of the decade.

For the final three slots, the predictions favor Elsinore, Tender Loving Care, and Digger, with The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth, Primetime, The Debut, and Being Heumann still hovering on the bubble. A24's Primetime — fresh off one of the studio's strongest box-office openings ever — landing in the Best Picture conversation at all is one of the season's more intriguing developments, and a sign that commercial breakthroughs can still buy awards legitimacy.

The NYFF Wild Cards

But the race is far from locked, because the New York Film Festival still has three world premieres that could upend everything. First up is Tony Gilroy's Behemoth!, premiering October 2, with Pedro Pascal cast as a cellist — a turn that already has the internet buzzing. Then comes Luca Guadagnino's Artificial on October 5, with Andrew Garfield taking on the role of the OpenAI CEO in a film that could not be more of-the-moment. Rounding out the trio is Tom McCarthy's A Statement, premiering October 3, which pairs Paul Rudd and Paul Giamatti as scientists and policymakers grappling with climate change.

Any one of these could follow the classic NYFF trajectory: premiere, rapturous word-of-mouth, instant coronation. Guadagnino, in particular, knows this dance — his festival premieres have a habit of dominating the conversation for weeks.

Dark Horses to Watch

Don't sleep on the outliers either. Godzilla Minus Zero premiered at NYFF on September 26 with genuine Best Picture buzz, according to reports, riding high after its stops at Venice, Telluride, and TIFF — proof that genre cinema is no longer locked out of the top category. And then there's Robert Eggers' Werwulf, a werewolf movie starring Willem Dafoe with dialogue spoken entirely in Middle English. If that's not the kind of audacious swing that seduces the Academy's craft branches, nothing is.

Finally, there's Amazon's I Play Rocky, with Anthony Ippolito stepping into Sylvester Stallone's shoes. It emerged from TIFF as one of the festival's major crowdpleasers, and crowdpleasers have a way of sneaking into the final lineup when the preferential ballot kicks in. With nominations still months away, one thing is certain: this race is going to be a brawl.