'Wicked' Flies To 10 Oscar Nominations
'The Wild Robot' gets 3 while 'Emilia Pérez' leads with 13
After a six day delay to wrap up voting in the midst of the Los Angeles wildfires, which have left at least 28 people dead with more than 14,000 structures destroyed and nearly 40,000 acres burned, Thursday finally saw the announcement of nominations for the 97th Academy Awards, happening March 2. Conan O’Brien is hosting and as always will air live on ABC. Emilia Pérez scored a total of 13 nominations, the new record for a non-English-language film, eclipsing Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon by three. That’s the same gap by which Emilia Pérez leads its class, with The Brutalist and most pertinently Wicked also earning ten nominations.
All three films are nominated for Best Picture, against Anora, A Complete Unknown, Conclave, Dune: Part Two, I’m Still Here, Nickel Boys, and The Substance. Wicked’s witches are also nominated, Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba for Actress in a Leading Role against Emilia Pérez’s Karla Sofía Gascón, Anora’s Mikey Madison, The Substance’s Demi Moore, and I’m Still Here‘s Fernanda Torres. Ariana Grande as G(a)linda is nominated for Actress in a Supporting Role against A Complete Unknown’s Monica Barbaro, The Brutalist’s Felicity Jones, Conclave’s Isabella Rossellini, and Emilia Pérez’s Zoe Saldaña. Celebrating her nomination, Grande took to Instagram to say “picking my head up in between sobs to say thank you so much to theacademy for this unfathomable recognition. i cannot stop crying, to no one’s surprise. i’m humbled and deeply honored to be in such brilliant company and sharing this with tiny ari who sat and studied Judy Garland singing Somewhere Over the Rainbow just before the big, beautiful bubble entered. i’m so proud of you, tiny. thank you again, from the bottom of my heart, for this acknowledgement theacademy. thank you jonmchu for taking this chance on me and for being the most unbelievably brilliant leader, human being, and most fierce friend. i am so deeply proud of my beautiful Wicked family. i am so proud of my Elphie, my sister, my dear cynthiaerivo. your brilliance is never ending and you deserve every flower (tulip) in every garden. i love you unconditionally, always. i don’t quite have all my words yet, i’m still trying to breathe. but thank you. oh my goodness, thank you. Universal, Marc, my family, my heart.”
Erivo celebrated her nomination as well, though taking her time presumably with something more private before posting, for which she wrote “Moments like this don’t come along very often, and when they do, it is sacrilege to let them pass by without a moment of gratitude. I am grateful, grateful to the Academy, grateful to be a part of something that makes people feel seen, grateful to be a cog in the wheel of a piece that makes us believe in magic, grateful to have experienced a dream come true, and deeply deeply grateful for this unbelievable recognition. I often get asked what I would say to my younger self. Well today there’s nothing to be said. She is smiling, beaming, glowing from ear to ear. That speaks volumes. To my sister, arianagrande, what a joy it is to be here with you watching as you ascend and amaze and become the actress you were meant to be. Congratulations first time nominee, I’m so so proud of you!! There is no one in the world I would have wanted to do this with more than you. Thank you jonmchu, our fearless leader whose kindness provided us with the room to play, you are deserving of all good things and I’m lucky to call you my brother. Marc, Winnie, Stephen, Universal fam, Wicked fam!!! LETS GO!!! 💚🧹”
Paul Tazewell has been nominated for costume design, and he’s going up against A Complete Unknown’s Arianne Phillips, Conclave’s Lisy Christl, Gladiator II’s Janty Yates and Dave Crossman, and Nosferatu’s Linda Muir. Myron Kerstein is nominated for film editing against Anora’s Sean Baker, The Brutalist’s David Jancso, Conclave’s Nick Emerson, and Emilia Pérez’s Juliette Welfling. Frances Hannon, Laura Blount and Sarah Nuth have been nominated for makeup and hairstyling against A Different Man’s Mike Marino, David Presto and Crystal Jurado, Emilia Pérez’s Julia Floch Carbonel, Emmanuel Janvier and Jean-Christophe Spadaccini, Nosferatu’s David White, Traci Loader and Suzanne Stokes-Munton, and The Substance’s Pierre-Olivier Persin, Stéphanie Guillon and Marilyne Scarselli. The production design of Nathan Crowley and set decoration by Lee Sandales are up for production design against The Brutalist’s Judy Becker and Patricia Cuccia, Conclave’s Suzie Davies and Cynthia Sleiter, Dune: Part Two’s Patrice Vermette and Shane Vieau, and Nosferatu’s Craig Lathrop and Beatrice Brentnerová. Pablo Helman, Jonathan Fawkner, David Shirk and Paul Corbould are nominated for visual effects against Alien: Romulus’s Eric Barba, Nelson Sepulveda-Fauser, Daniel Macarin and Shane Mahan, Better Man’s Luke Millar, David Clayton, Keith Herft and Peter Stubbs, Dune: Part Two’s Paul Lambert, Stephen James, Rhys Salcombe and Gerd Nefzer, and Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes’s Erik Winquist, Stephen Unterfranz, Paul Story and Rodney Burke.
Now to discuss the final two categories Wicked is nominated in, I feel I should also bring up the three nominations The Wild Robot received. That’s because, sound the alarm, there’s overlap. The former’s John Powell and Stephen Schwartz, and the latter’s Kris Bowers are up for Original Score against each other and The Brutalist’s Daniel Blumberg, Conclave’s Volker Bertelmann, and Emilia Pérez’s Clément Ducol and Camille. Wicked’s Simon Hayes, Nancy Nugent Title, Jack Dolman, Andy Nelson and John Marquis and The Wild Robot’s Randy Thom, Brian Chumney, Gary A. Rizzo and Leff Lefferts go up against A Complete Unknown’s Tod A. Maitland, Donald Sylvester, Ted Caplan, Paul Massey and David Giammarco, Dune: Part Two’s Gareth John, Richard King, Ron Bartlett and Doug Hemphill and Emilia Pérez’s Erwan Kerzanet, Aymeric Devoldère, Maxence Dussère, Cyril Holtz and Niels Barletta.
What’s that final nomination for The Wild Robot? Well, Best Animated Feature of course. It’s going up against Flow, Inside Out 2, Memoir of a Snail, and Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl. Not a lot of surprise there to be quite honest. Seems like the typical crop we’ve seen this season. Nominated director Chris Sanders was/is in Japan as nomination news broke, reacting “Three nominations, it’s incredible. We all screamed when we heard that score was nominated, and so deservedly. The lack of dialogue meant that one of the biggest voices in this film is the music and that was going to be handled by Kris Bowers. He had a massive job, just the scale of it, but the nuance, the beauty, the sensitivity and the strength of what he did is nothing I’ve ever heard before.”
Sanders finds the recognition for this movie in particular rather special. “From the beginning, this has been a completely different movie than I’ve ever worked on, and a completely different movie than DreamWorks has ever made before,” he says. “This is the kind of risk that a studio would normally only take on a short, but DreamWorks risked it on a feature, and that is absolutely extraordinary.” That risk in question was about returning to previously-abandoned techniques. “When CG came along, we were obligated to depart from painted, handmade things. The Wild Robot is a return to all those wonderful things I fell in love with when I first saw animation, and all the reasons I got into animation are contained within this film.” As a reminder and by complete coincidence (remember announcements were supposed to be on January 17), The Wild Robot arrives on Peacock tomorrow.
Because Wicked’s FYC campaign rightly emphasized the performances of its female leads, it obviously wasn’t nominated in either Actor category. It’s still probably worth sharing them. Lead Actor nominees are Adrien Brody for The Brutalist, Timothée Chalamet for A Complete Unknown, Colman Domingo for Sing Sing, Ralph Fiennes for Conclave and Sebastian Stan for The Apprentice. Supporting Actor nominations are Yura Borisov for Anora, Kieran Culkin for A Real Pain, Edward Norton for A Complete Unknown, Guy Pearce for The Brutalist and Jeremy Strong for The Apprentice.
Sources: The Hollywood Reporter, Deadline