Warner hits ‘Sinners’ and ‘One Battle’ up for Oscar nominations

Both are expected to take home a dozen or more awards at Hollywood’s grandest awards ceremony, from Best Picture and Best Actor to the new Best Casting award.

Ironically, that rare and enviable position of a single Hollywood studio, boasting two clear Oscar frontrunners, comes in Warner Bros.’s swansong year as an independent distributor.

Warner Bros. is the target of a fierce bidding war between Paramount Skydance and Netflix.

Yet, despite the struggles of its parent company Warner Bros. Discovery, the iconic film studio has enjoyed a banner year, bucking Tinseltown’s obsession with sequels and favoring original fare from auteur filmmakers.

“Sinners,” a blues-inflected period horror film about the segregated American South, comes from “Black Panther” director Ryan Coogler.

Hopefully it features Michael B. Jordan, who plays two twins battling vampires and racists in 1930s Mississippi, will receive a Best Actor nomination, along with everything from the screenplay to the score.

According to Variety awards expert Clayton Davis, “Sinners” could break the all-time record for 14 nominations currently held by “All About Eve,” “Titanic” and “La La Land” by a single film.

Coogler, Davis wrote, is “completely rewriting the mathematics,” and “can enter a statistical stratosphere that no filmmaker has ever touched.”

But so far this awards season, Paul Thomas Anderson, whose formidable, eclectic filmography runs from “Boogie Nights” to “There Will Be Blood,” has won nearly every award for “One Battle After Another.”

A groundbreaking thriller about a retired revolutionary searching for his teenage daughter against a backdrop of radical violence, immigration raids and white supremacists, it broke the all-time record for nominations by Hollywood’s Actors Guild.

Former Best Actor Oscar winner Leonardo DiCaprio is almost certain to secure his seventh acting nomination from the Academy.

Netflix has its hopes in Guillermo del Toro’s monster horror flick “Frankenstein,” tragic Western avant-garde drama “Train Dreams” and animated musical sensation “Kpop Demon Hunters.”

In contrast, rival Paramount’s awards hopefuls’ shelves are noticeably bare.

– Best Casting –

“Hamnet,” a tragic literary adaptation that imagines William Shakespeare dealing with the death of his son, is likely to get a ton of nominations.

Jessie Buckley, who plays the Bard’s long-suffering wife Agnes, is up for a best actress nomination.

Chances are he’ll have Emma Stone playing an alien, or is she? Conspiracy theorist in the drama “Bugonia” and Norwegian actress Renate Reinsve in the arthouse darling “Sentimental Value”.

With the Academy’s overseas voter base rapidly expanding, “Sentimental Value” is one of a trio of non-English language films that could compete for best picture.

Along with the Persian-language Palme d’Or winner “It Was Just an Accident,” there’s also Brazil’s “The Secret Agent,” though “space seems limited” for all three to make the list, Davis wrote.

“The Secret Agent” star Wagner Moura, who plays a scientist fleeing Brazil’s 1970s dictatorship, is expected to compete with DiCaprio and Jordan for best actor.

But at the forefront of that category is Timothée Chalamet, whose role as a ruthless, talented and extremely ambitious ping pong player in 1950s New York in “Marty Supreme” has already won him a Golden Globe, a Critics’ Choice Award, and more.

A new Oscar for Best Casting is being introduced this year, honoring experts who connect actors to projects long before production on a future blockbuster or indie hit begins.

With no precedent, it’s unclear what voters might actually be looking for.

“Is it star power? Mass togetherness? Looking for a discovery?”. asked Davis.

The nominations will be unveiled at 5:30 a.m. Thursday in Los Angeles, followed by the 98th Oscars ceremony on March 15.

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