Oscars 2024 shortlist: Barbie leads with 5 nominations so far

Greta Gerwig’s Barbie got five mentions, including three in the song category - Dua Lipa’s ‘Dance the Night’, Billie Eilish’s ‘What was I made for?’, and Mark Ronson’s ‘I’m just Ken’. (Photo courtesy Warner Bros)

On Thursday, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced shortlists for 10 Oscar categories, including documentary and international features as well as documentary short subject, makeup and hairstyling, original score, original song, animated short, live-action short, sound, and visual effects.

These shortlists are still a step removed from the actual nominations which will be announced on January 23. But they function as a useful barometer to see which way the industry is leaning, especially when it comes to Best Picture nominations and the overall frontrunners for the year. They also help foreshadow any surprise dark horses, like Netflix’s All Quiet on the Western Front last year. This year, that dark horse is a Netflix contender again, the Spanish language Society of the Snow.

Society of the Snow found itself on four shortlists - International Feature Film, Makeup and Hairstyling, Music (Original Score), and Visual Effects. The movie, directed by J.A. Bayona (Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom), is a retelling of the real-life Uruguayan Andes flight disaster in 1972. It is set to stream on January 4, 2024, and could repeat Netflix’s success with All Quiet on the Western Front, which received nine nominations and won four Oscars on the big night.

Netflix also struck gold with the Jon Batiste documentary American Symphony which landed on three of the lists - Documentary, Music (Original Score) and Music (Original Song). That’s not all; the streaming platform chalked up another six mentions, including Makeup and Hairstyling for Maestro (showing that all that controversy about Bradley Cooper using a prosthetic nose in his portrayal of Lenny Bernstein didn’t hurt the movie at all).

On the streaming side, Apple was no slouch, with four mentions for Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, with a surprise entry on the song shortlist. This could indicate broader industry support across categories for the three plus hour epic. Marty recently turned 81, and the Academy might consider this his swansong. Apple also racked up a mention for Still, the Michael J. Fox documentary, and two mentions in song for John Carney’s Flora and Son, who has had previous success in this category back in 2008 with Falling Slowly from Once.

The big story of the day is Greta Gerwig’s Barbie with five mentions, the highest of any movie. However, it’s a bittersweet triumph, since three of those mentions are in the song category - Dua Lipa’s ‘Dance the Night’, Billie Eilish’s ‘What was I made for?’, and Mark Ronson’s ‘I’m just Ken’. And thanks to the Music branch’s inane rules, only two of these can make it to the final nominations, so these three mentions don’t really count for much in the larger scheme of things. More troubling is the lack of recognition in Makeup and Hairstyling, and even Visual Effects, both of which were considered a shoo-in for the highest grossing movie of the year. This clearly does not bode well for Barbie’s chances to make it a pink night at Oscars.

Every year, there is one branch that messes with everyone’s predictions. This year, it was the Visual Effects branch that decided to show its quirky side. Apart from shutting out Barbie, they also passed on Killers of the Flower Moon, and had already rejected Oppenheimer early on from their longlist, another Best Picture frontrunner. In place of these three, they went with the surprise Japanese hit Godzilla Minus One, which was made on a budget of less than $15 million. The other VFX surprise was the animated sequel Spider-man: Across the Spider-verse. And it’s safe to assume the third spot was taken by the aforementioned Society of the Snow.

The documentary shortlist includes Canadian entry To Kill a Tiger by Nisha Pahuja. The documentary centers on an Indian family in Jharkhand fighting for justice after their teenage daughter was brutally raped. Mindy Kaling and Dev Patel came on board as executive producers earlier this year, and should be able to use their clout to get more eyes on the film.

A few other things worth mentioning: no songs from any of the expected children’s movies - Super Mario Bros, Elemental, Wish, Trolls Band Together, or The Little Mermaid - made the shortlist. The only animated movie to find a mention was Spider-verse’s ‘Am I Dreaming’ by Metro Boomin and A$AP Rocky. Meanwhile, A24’s German-language Nazi drama The Zone of Interest showed some heat with three mentions including International Feature as the United Kingdom’s entry. Speaking of International Feature, visionary German auteur Wim Wender’s critically acclaimed Perfect Days is on the shortlist as Japan’s entry. Finally, Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things is making a last-minute surge with three mentions.

It’s a year full of strong contenders between Barbie, Oppenheimer, Killers of the Flower Moon, Maestro, and Poor Things, each of which could conceivably pick up more than 5 nominations. But the lack of clear consensus on a front-runner means the field is still wide open.

Barbenheimer may have blown up the box-office, but the Academy is a whole different beast.