In this end-of-year Feinberg Forecast, veteran awards analyst Scott Feinberg summarizes where the 2025 Oscar race stands as voting deadlines approach. Over a December weekend, new commercial and critical data for James Cameron’s Avatar: Fire and Ash arrived — Rotten Tomatoes shows 67% critic approval and 91% audience approval, and the film opened worldwide to $345 million — data that complicates late-season trajectories. Across 24 Academy categories Feinberg updates frontrunners, threats and long shots, explains his methodology, and flags where history and branch voting behavior matter most. His central conclusion: Warner Bros.’ One Battle After Another currently appears to be the strongest Best Picture force, but multiple races remain fluid with fewer than 90 days to go.
Key takeaways
- Avatar: Fire and Ash opened to $345 million worldwide and carries 67% critics / 91% audience at Rotten Tomatoes, making its awards trajectory uncertain compared with 2009’s Avatar (81%/82%, $241.6M opening) and 2022’s The Way of Water (76%/92%, $441.7M).
- Feinberg projects nominees across all 24 Oscar categories in a final forecast for 2025, emphasizing campaign momentum, precursor awards and branch-specific voting patterns.
- One Battle After Another (Warner Bros.) is the clear Best Picture frontrunner after wins from major critics groups, the NBR and the Gothams, plus strong Globe and Critics Choice showings.
- Precursors cluster several likely acting nominees (DiCaprio, Moura, Hawke, Chalamet, Jordan, Edgerton) but Feinberg stresses that journalists’ awards don’t map directly to Academy acting-branch voting.
- International Feature shortlists favor Neon-distributed titles (It Was Just an Accident, No Other Choice, The Secret Agent, Sirāt, Sentimental Value), creating a real possibility that multiple or all slots could come from a single distributor.
- In technical categories, F1, Frankenstein, Sinners and Avatar: Fire and Ash repeatedly appear across sound, visual effects, score and production-design shortlists, marking them as multi-category contenders.
- Animation and documentary branches have independent rhythms: Zootopia 2’s $1.27 billion global haul makes it a commercial standout, while Netflix’s The Perfect Neighbor and the five-hour My Undesirable Friends: Part I show strong doc momentum.
Background
The Feinberg Forecast is a predictive exercise that synthesizes screenings, campaign activity, conversations with voters and historical precedents to estimate what Academy members will do, not what they should do. Scott Feinberg has tracked Oscar seasons for years and relies on pattern recognition across branches — for example, the relative insularity of the acting branch versus the broader participation in categories like cinematography or score. This year’s calendar has been compressed at the finish, with several late releases and awards-group decisions shifting momentum in December.
Precursor awards have shaped today’s picture: LA and New York critics groups, the National Board of Review and the Gothams handed major prizes that amplified One Battle After Another’s profile, while the Golden Globes and Critics Choice placed many titles (Marty Supreme, Sinners, Hamnet, Sentimental Value) in repeat contention. Still, Feinberg repeatedly cautions that critics and journalists are not Academy actors, directors or craftspeople — branches vote in distinct ways, so mapping journalist ballots to Oscars always carries risks.
Main event
Best Picture appears to be consolidating around One Battle After Another after a sweep of top critics prizes and a heavy showing in precursor nominations. Feinberg lists a top ten of likely Best Picture nominees, with Warner Bros.’ film first, followed by Focus’s Hamnet and several Neon and Netflix titles. He ranks films as frontrunners, major threats, possibilities and long shots based on campaign strength and branch-specific appeal.
Directing is largely tracking Best Picture, with Paul Thomas Anderson positioned as the leading contender for One Battle After Another, joined by Ryan Coogler, Chloé Zhao, Joachim Trier and Guillermo del Toro in the projected five. Jafar Panahi’s momentum improved after the Dec. 1 news of an in-absentia sentence in Iran; his film’s international financing and festival wins gave him awards traction beyond what many expected.
Acting races show journalistic support for names such as Leonardo DiCaprio, Timothée Chalamet, Wagner Moura and Ethan Hawke, but Feinberg stresses low-profile releases can lose actor-branch votes. In supporting categories, a tight pool (Skarsgård, Del Toro, Penn, Mescal, Elordi, Sandler) looks likely to produce most Oscar nominees, with only minor shuffling expected unless a late surge occurs.
Analysis & implications
Feinberg’s central analytic lens is branch behavior: the directors, actors, writers, craftspeople and technical voters each have different viewing habits, institutional memories and aesthetic priorities. The result is that some precursors (critics groups, Globes, Critics Choice) are useful but imperfect predictors; the most reliable signals come from groups composed of practitioners — for instance, composers predicting score races or cinematographers predicting camera work. Campaign strategy that targets branch voters directly can therefore outweigh broader popular acclaim.
Late releases complicate forecasts. Avatar: Fire and Ash’s strong audience approval and blockbuster opening suggest box-office momentum, but its lower critic rating relative to the 2009 Avatar and the mixed outcome for The Way of Water in 2022 make its awards fate ambiguous. Filmmakers with long careers (James Cameron) have institutional recognition, yet repeated franchise work can erode novelty with some voters. Feinberg frames Cameron as a wild card: technically formidable but potentially suffering from familiarity fatigue in certain Academy constituencies.
The International Feature shortlist reveals distribution dynamics: Neon’s heavy slate (several films on the shortlist) increases the chance of dominance in the category, which would be notable because distributors rarely secure multiple foreign-language noms in a single year at this scale. If Neon indeed converts multiple shortlist placements into nominations, that will reflect both festival win leverage and focused Oscar-season campaigning across branches.
Comparison & data
| Film | Critics RT | Audience RT | Worldwide Opening |
|---|---|---|---|
| Avatar (2009) | 81% | 82% | $241.6M |
| Avatar: The Way of Water (2022) | 76% | 92% | $441.7M |
| Avatar: Fire and Ash (2025) | 67% | 91% | $345M |
The table above places Fire and Ash in context: audience enthusiasm is strong, but critical response and the comparative opening weekend both alter expectations versus prior franchise installments. In other data points, Zootopia 2’s $1.27 billion global gross makes it the second-highest-grossing film of 2025, and it sits apart in animation as a commercial behemoth. Feinberg also flags shortlists (e.g., Academy shortlists for sound, VFX, music) as decisive mid-season gates that shape campaign resource allocation and voter attention.
Reactions & quotes
“A number of films have had strong showings since our last update, but One Battle After Another is way out in front of the rest of the field.”
Scott Feinberg / The Hollywood Reporter
“It’s too early to project a trajectory for Avatar: Fire and Ash, but stay tuned.”
Scott Feinberg / The Hollywood Reporter
“Journalists’ awards are informative but not determinative — branches behave differently, and that keeps several races open.”
Scott Feinberg / The Hollywood Reporter
Unconfirmed
- Whether Avatar: Fire and Ash’s $345M opening will translate into significant Academy support remains unconfirmed and dependent on branch-specific responses.
- The prospect that Neon could secure most or all International Feature nominations is plausible but unconfirmed; final voting by Academy members will decide.
- Any internal Academy sentiment about James Cameron’s repeated franchise work and its effect on director-branch voting is anecdotal and not independently verified.
Bottom line
Feinberg’s end-of-2025 forecast presents One Battle After Another as the strongest Best Picture contender, supported by an array of critics’ prizes and precursor nominations. Still, multiple categories remain open: late releases, distributor campaigning, and the idiosyncrasies of branch voting can and often do alter outcomes between December and final voting.
For readers tracking the race, pay attention to branch-specific shortlists and screenings in January, how late box-office and streaming numbers affect visibility, and any campaign moves that target individual branches rather than the general press. Feinberg’s forecast is designed to predict Academy behavior by blending data and institutional knowledge — but, as always, surprises remain possible in an awards season that still has momentum shifts ahead.
Sources
- The Hollywood Reporter (industry analysis / original Feinberg Forecast)
- Rotten Tomatoes (review aggregator)
- Box Office Mojo (search) (box-office database)