Oppenheimer Has Engulfed Awards Season

This is the latest edition of the Movies Fantasy League newsletter. The drafting window for this season has closed, but you can still sign up to get the newsletter, which provides a weekly recap of box-office performance, awards nominations, and critical chatter on all the buzziest movies.

Welcome back to your regularly scheduled awards season; we hope you enjoyed the time-travel Emmys.

There comes a point in nearly every awards season when we’re confronted with the realization that it’s all over. Sunday night’s Critics Choice Awards, coming a week after the Golden Globes, was that moment for Oppenheimer. Five Globes, eight CCAs, Best Picture/Best Director at both … it’s over, people. (But just to be safe, please delete this email after reading.)

As concerns the Movies Fantasy League, it’s increasingly certain that Oppenheimer is going to end up as the season’s highest point earner. The 760 points it’s accrued to date has it already running comfortably ahead of the field, 80 points in front of second-place Barbie (680 points) and third-place Killers of the Flower Moon (642 points), and it’s showing no signs of slowing down. If you’re hoping to win the MFL and opted against selecting Oppenheimer, your roster has no margin for error. Or for, say, Napoleon.

We’ll dissect the current state of the leaderboard (it’s nuts) soon enough, but let’s start with the points.

Another Wonka Weekend at No. 1 Wasn’t Meant to Bee

For the purposes of the Movies Fantasy League, the Jason Statham action flick The Beekeeper is none of our business since it belongs to 2024. But in addition to being the only No. 1 movie in America to share a title with a Tori Amos album, The Beekeeper has knocked Wonka off the perch where it had been residing for three of the last four weeks. Wonka was still able to pick up another $10 million over the weekend, bringing it $178 million. Along with its smattering of awards points to get it to 348 points for the season, the Paul King/Timmy Chalamet musical fantasy is bounding up on Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour (394 points) to be the top box-office-eligible movie of the fantasy-league season.

Elsewhere on the box-office report, third- and fourth-place finishers Migration ($87 million cumulative) and Anyone But You ($56 million) continue to perform. Amid the IP-saturated releases of 2023, both films are now in the top six of purely original — i.e., no sequels, reboots, adaptations, or biographies — feature films. Also on that list: Elemental, M3gan, Cocaine Bear, and Wish. (Don’t start with the “Anyone But You is inspired by Much Ado About Nothing.” So’s your mom.)

When You Got It, Flaunt It (It’s from The Producers)

The Producers Guild of America chimed in on Friday with their lists of the ten best feature films, animated films, and documentary films of the year. Much like their counterparts at the DGA, they didn’t offer much in the way of surprises. The ten movies that have been performing the best this awards season are the ten that the PGA listed: American Fiction, Anatomy of a Fall, Barbie, The Holdovers, Killers of the Flower Moon, Maestro, Oppenheimer, Past Lives, Poor Things, and The Zone of Interest.

In past years, the PGA has earned a reputation for eschewing a few of the less commercial titles in favor of more broadly appealing honorees. Hey, they’re producers; they want the moneymakers. This has resulted in nominations for movies like Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Crazy Rich Asians, Wonder Woman, Deadpool, and Skyfall, to name a few. Apparently this year, with the blockbuster entries Barbie and Oppenheimer doubling as actual favorites in the race, the producers felt free to indulge their more continental tastes with Cannes faves Anatomy of a Fall and The Zone of Interest.

All ten nominated features picked up 15 fantasy-league points, as did the animated movies — The Boy and the Heron and Spider-Verse continue to stomp through awards season, joined by Elemental, The Super Mario Bros. Movie, and, encouragingly, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem — as well as the documentaries. If you picked up 20 Days in Mariupol, American Symphony, Beyond Utopia, or The Mother of All Lies for cheap, you got some points for your trouble.

It Stinks! (It’s from The Critic)

The Broadcast Film Critics Association loaded their membership and an army of nominated film and TV professionals into an airplane hangar and called it an awards show on Sunday night. Here’s where the Oppenheimer juggernaut really asserted itself, winning eight prizes on the night (for 125 points total), including Best Picture, Best Director (Christopher Nolan), and Best Supporting Actor (Robert Downey Jr.).

The Holdovers picked up 60 points on the night, including 25 points apiece for the Best Actor and Best Supporting Actress prizes won by Paul Giamatti and Da’Vine Joy Randolph, respectively. Also worth 25 points were the screenplay awards won by Barbie and American Fiction. Barbie landed six awards in total, putting it in the same boat as The Holdovers and Killers of the Flower Moon as most likely to capitalize if Oppenheimer falters down the stretch (which it won’t, because this race is over). Almost all of Barbie’s wins (+85 points in total) came in the ten-point categories, including a #SeeHer award for America Ferrera, who was honored for her work in Barbie and Dumb Money.

The biggest upset of the night, and it wasn’t that big of a shock, was Poor Things’ Emma Stone beating out Killers of the Flower Moon’s Lily Gladstone for Best Actress. Killers went home empty-handed on Sunday night, one of the rare times that’s happened this season.

Anatomy of a Fall picked up a ten-point boost as Best Foreign Language Film, and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse bested The Boy and the Heron for the ten-point Best Animated Feature award.

Leaderboard

Well, Oppy, you’ve done it. You’ve helped create a seven-way tie at the top of the charts. Seven! Way! Tie! This is a result of seven identical rosters all coming up with what is, to date, a rock-solid lineup of point earners:

All of Us Strangers
American Fiction
Anatomy of a Fall
Barbie
Poor Things
Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour
The Boy and the Heron
The Holdovers

There is no fat on that lineup. But! As formidable as this roster appears, you’ll notice what isn’t there. How long can these Oppy-free lineups withstand the fission blast of the awards to come for Christopher Nolan’s movie? Especially when there are seven more teams within 100 points. The Eras Tour is basically dead from a future-earnings perspective. All of Us Strangers reeeeally needs Andrew Scott to crack that Best Actor lineup at the Oscars to remain viable. Anatomy of a Fall isn’t eligible for the Best International Feature award, which would have been its best chance to go home with a trophy on Oscar night.

In other words, these seven rosters sit on a tenuous lead atop a volatile pack of challengers.

You can see the full leaderboard here on the main MFL landing page.

Looking Ahead

The BAFTA nominations hit on Thursday, and then on Tuesday the 23rd, it’s the Oscar nominations. We’ll know a lot about where we stand after that. Please never move the Emmys again.

Questions? Feedback? Can’t find your team or mini-league on the leaderboard? Drop us a line at [email protected].