By bizn_fun 
Five films are clear favourites. They are…
With more than 300 movies eligible for the 98th Academy Awards, and more than 200 eligible for best picture alone, it’s no mean feat whittling down the contenders.
Each of the Oscars’ 24 categories has five nominees, except for the top prize, best picture, which has 10.
Best picture, best director, best actor/actress, best supporting actor/actress and best adapted/original screenplay carry the most prestige and are considered the eight “above the line” categories.
This year, there’s a new category in the mix too: best achievement in casting.
Five films stand out as clear favourites to earn the most nominations:
- One Battle After Another, starring Leonardo DiCaprio as a washed-up revolutionary whose past comes back to haunt him when his daughter is kidnapped;
- Hamnet, about the death of Shakespeare’s son, which historians believe inspired him to write Hamlet. Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal both star;
- Marty Supreme, with Timothee Chalamet as a table tennis hustler on the quest for ping pong glory in 1950s New York;
- Vampire horror Sinners, with Michael B Jordan putting in a double shift playing twin brothers, Smoke and Stack, set in a segregated 1930s US
- Gothic horror Frankenstein, based on Mary Shelley’s early 19th-century novel, directed by Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro
International features Sentimental Value (Norway), The Secret Agent (Brazil), and It Was Just an Accident (set in Iran but a French production) may well cut through, and we’re likely to see animations KPop Demon Hunters and Zootopia 2 get some love too.
This year, actors Danielle Brooks, who starred in the Color Purple, and Lewis Pullman, star of Top Gun: Maverick and son of Bill Pullman, will announce the nominations, live from the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in LA.
The Oscars’ ceremony will take place on Sunday 15 March at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, hosted by US comedian Conan O’Brien for the second year running.