Yahoo Movies Could Wicked win Best Picture at the Oscars?
The Oscar nominations provided good news for the residents of Oz, but there are some big hurdles between Wicked and the Best Picture crown.
The Oscar nominations for 2025 have now been unveiled and one of the biggest movies of the year was very well-represented. Wicked managed 10 nominations, including Best Picture, so it's very much in the frame when it comes to the awards. It has already scooped $710m (£576m) at the global box office, but some awards season silverware would look very nice in the Shiz University trophy case.
Wicked has vaulted the first hurdle, defying gravity to land a spot on the Academy's shortlist. So it's time to take a look at its competitors and the other nominations in order to work out whether Wicked could upset the odds — it's currently way behind bookies' favourite The Brutalist — and win the big one at the Oscars 2025.
Well, it's very rare that a movie wins Best Picture without hoovering up awards elsewhere. The last two Best Picture winners scored seven Oscars each. That's good news for Wicked, which could be the biggest winner in this year's technical categories.
For starters, Wicked has a great chance at emerging victorious in Best Original Score, Best Production Design, Best Costume Design, Best Sound, and Best Makeup and Hairstyling. If The Brutalist wins in the first two of those categories on the night, it could be an early sign of where the Academy's love lies. Wicked also could win for Best Visual Effects, though there's considerable competition in that category from the likes of Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes.
We saw the merits of technical category wins at last year's Oscars, when Oppenheimer spent the whole night quietly hoovering up awards on the way to its big victory. It's not always as certain as that, though. Dune dominated the tech awards in 2022, when CODA won Best Picture, while the likes of Gravity and Mad Max: Fury Road have topped the award charts without winning the major one.
Read more: 'Wicked is one of the best musical movies of all time' (Yahoo Entertainment, 5 min read)
Crucially, Wicked has also secured a handful of very important above-the-line nominations. Cynthia Erivo — who sits just an O short of an EGOT — was a surprise inclusion on the Best Actress shortlist, beating out the likes of Nicole Kidman (Babygirl), Angelina Jolie (Maria), Saoirse Ronan (The Outrun), and Pamela Anderson (The Last Showgirl). She joins co-star Ariana Grande, who is a major contender for Best Supporting Actress.
Wicked also secured the most important nomination for a possible Best Picture winner: a berth in the five-strong shortlist for Best Editing. Across the last 40 years, only two movies have won Best Picture without a nomination for their editing. The last two Best Editing winners have gone on to be crowned Best Picture. So with that in mind, our Best Picture shortlist is effectively cut down to: Anora, The Brutalist, Conclave, Emilia Pérez, and Wicked.
Read more: Michelle Yeoh Makes Bold Admission About Her Wicked Singing (HuffPost, 3 min read)
It's not all good news (impossible not so sing in your best Munchkin voice) for Wicked in terms of the nominations, though. The film missed key noms in the Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay categories. Traditionally, these are important for Best Picture winners.
Take the directing award, for example. In the last 30 years, only three films (Argo, Green Book, and CODA again) have won Best Picture without at least a nomination for their director. Screenplay is even more important. Across the last 40 years, Titanic is the only film to win Best Picture without a nomination for its screenplay. In fact, it has only happened seven times in the 96-year history of the Oscars. That's a big problem for Wicked.
So, in short, Wicked's prospects don't look great. There's no doubt that Jon M Chu's deliriously Ozian musical will have a presence on Oscar night, but there's very little chance he'll take the stage at the close of the show. There's always next year and the sequel, of course.
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There are simply too many factors against Wicked for it to win this time, with The Brutalist and Emilia Pérez looking like the prime contenders — though we shouldn't count out dark horse candidate Conclave. If Wicked does win, though, it shows that the Oscars have been changed... for good.
Wicked is available to rent or buy on digital platforms such as Prime Video in the UK now. It's also still in cinemas.
