Since the advent of movie sound, there have been movie musicals. Their power has waned over the years, but there is almost always one that a big studio will take a chance on. Typically, it’s because they own the intellectual property rights, and there is built in name recognition. Many musicals throughout the 97 years of Oscar history have been nominated for awards, many in Best Picture. Yet, only nine winners out of 96 winners have been musicals. The Broadway Melody for the years 1928/1929, Going My Way (1944), An American in Paris (1951), Gigi (1958), West Side Story (1961), My Fair Lady (1964), The Sound of Music (1965), Oliver! (1968), and most recently, Chicago in 2002.
It’s been 22 years since Chicago‘s win and while there have been a few Best Picture musical nominees since, the closest a musical has come to winning Best Picture in those 22 years was when Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway were handed the wrong envelope at the 2017 ceremony, falsely announcing La La Land as winner.
While it’s unlikely for a musical to win this year, several big studio efforts were made to bring musicals to the people in 2024. Two of the most ambitious are unlikely to strike a chord with voters, though. Mean Girls, a musical update of the 2004 coming-of-age classic, was released in January by Paramount and hasn’t had the stamina or audience support to be noted by awards voters. The same is true for the discordant Joker: Folie à Deux, released by Warner Bros., which had a prime slot in October but fell very flat with critics and audiences.
What’s left of the musicals that pundits and audiences are talking about are two wildly different, women-led stories of empowerment and friendship. They are Wicked: Part 1, released by Universal, and Emilia Pérez, released by Netflix. Both are poised to make it into the Best Picture top 10 for very different takes on the genre.
Wicked: Part 1 is traditional. It’s adapted from a Broadway musical phenomenon. It’s in the genre of musicals where the musical numbers are etched into the reality of the moment. It’s got the feel of what the genre has always embraced and the DNA of those Best Picture-winning musicals of the ’50s and ’60s. The production design, acting, and musical numbers are dazzling in true Hollywood fashion.
Emilia Pérez is firmly in a new school. It isn’t an adaptation but an original movie musical and, as such, bucks the tropes of the genre using its musical numbers not as the accepted reality but as fantasy sequences within the plot. The music veers from melodic to harsh, to ratatat. It’s a film that feels more present in the present as it presents a story about transgender identity and the blight of drug cartels. It’s got awe-inspiring numbers and elegant numbers, but more than anything it feels as if its music is secondary, an icing on top of the harsh reality.
A musical is never one thing, so it fits in this year of an open field to have two distinctly unique visions vying for Best Picture. It’s a year where it’s entirely possible for two of the ten Best Picture slots to be inhabited by the old school and the new in one of the oldest genres of cinema.
Below is a curated list of possible nominees amongst the films that have been theatrically released. It’s fun to speculate on what may be coming in December, but I’ll focus only on what has had its widest possible release at the time of publication. The list will be split into three categories.
The first category will be called “Safe Bet.” These films are the most likely to carry through the season and into the list of Oscar nominees. The next category will be called “Strong Potential.” These films have something going for them but may not have enough momentum to last the season. The final category, “Hopeful,” which has been with this column since the start, has been eliminated if only because the closer we get to nomination day on January 17th, the easier it will be to see the field emerge more clearly.
Here’s where I see the Best Picture field at this point.
Safe Bet
- Anora
- Challengers
- Conclave
- Dune: Part Two
- Emilia Pérez
- A Real Pain
- Sing Sing
- Wicked: Part 1
Strong Potential
- The Piano Lesson
- Blitz
