Nominations voting is from January 8-17, 2025, with official Oscar nominations announced January 23, 2025. Final voting is February 11-18, 2025. And finally, the 97th Oscars telecast will be broadcast on Sunday, March 2 and air live on ABC at 7:00 p.m. ET/ 4:00 p.m. PT. We update our picks through awards season, so keep checking IndieWire for all our 2025 Oscar predictions.
The State of the Race
With the equivalent of a Best Picture win at the BAFTA Awards and the Screen Actors Guild Awards, in addition to the multiple Best Screenplay awards the film has received from awards bodies like the Golden Globes and USC Scripter Awards, “Conclave” and screenwriter Peter Straughan are most likely a lock to win the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay.
And though this is not the first nomination for the “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” scribe, Straughan being the frontrunner does come as a bit of a surprise considering the category’s recent history. He would be the first screenwriter to win Best Adapted Screenplay without having also directed the film since James Ivory won for “Call Me By Your Name” in 2018. In recent years, voters have more often used the screenplay categories to recognize either an exciting emerging director or a long overdue auteur (think recent winners Cord Jefferson and Siân Heder or Spike Lee.)
Ultimately, though two Best Director nominees are also recognized in this category, there has not been the same push for anyone. Only “Nickel Boys” director RaMell Ross, along with co-writer/producer Joslyn Barnes, has come close, winning a DGA Award for first time feature filmmakers, as well as a WGA Award. Important to mention that “Conclave” was not eligible for the latter though.
Plus, in the case of “A Complete Unknown” writer/director James Mangold, and “Emilia Pérez” helmer Jacques Audiard, the two aforementioned filmmakers that have Best Director nominations, one could argue that they never stood a chance. Even though the Academy loves a well done musical or music biopic, neither genre has netted many screenplay Oscars, much less Oscar nominations.
Lastly, “Sing Sing” has been viewed as the biggest missed opportunity of the season. It still got the key nominations it was expected to get, including this one and Best Actor for star Colman Domingo, but there was a time where people believed the A24 release, an acquisition from TIFF 2023, was a lock for a Best Picture nomination. Had more Academy members felt compelled to watch the film, one could see it being irresistible to vote for it here as it would recognize both director Greg Kwedar and breakout performer Clarence Maclin. That said, the director is expected to be back to the Oscars soon with creative partner Clint Bentley (also a nominee,) as their new film “Train Dreams” was the Sundance 2025 film with the most Oscar buzz, and was in turn picked up by Netflix.
Nominees are listed in order of likelihood to win.
Peter Straughan (“Conclave”)
Joslyn Barnes and RaMell Ross (“Nickel Boys”)
Jay Cocks and James Mangold (“A Complete Unknown”)
Clint Bentley, Greg Kwedar, Clarence “Divine Eye” Maclin, and John “Divine G” Whitfield (“Sing Sing”)
Jacques Audiard (“Emilia Pérez”)
