What's next for key players from Oscar season?

by Nathaniel R

Elle Fanning and Michelle Pfeiffer in the forthcoming series MARGOT'S GOT MONEY TROUBLE

Let's gently segueway now to a new year in film. When Cláudio reminded us that  Timothée Chalamet has high profile projects coming up in the wake of two consecutive years of 'close-but-no-cigar' Best Actor runs, it got me to thinking about what's next for each of this year's nominees. We're skipping anything we already covered in the  first 2026 previews we did (Dune Part Three, Digger, The Odyssey, The Weight, etc) So herewith 20 enticing projects from film, tv, and stage featuring one or more of the players who were just up for Oscar gold. Will they return to the Oscar stage and, if so, how soon? The projects are listed in rough ascending order of current interest though that could obviously change once we see stills, trailers, or hear more buzz...

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Who’s the best director for each Oscar race?

by Cláudio Alves

FRANKENSTEIN is the third Guillermo del Toro movie to win the Best Production Design Oscar.

At the 98th Academy Awards, James Cameron extended his record as the director who has helmed the most Visual Effects Oscar winners, with Avatar: Fire and Ash being his eighth film to do so. At the same ceremony, Guillermo del Toro saw his Frankenstein take the Best Production Design prize, inching ever closer to tying, perhaps one day breaking, Tim Burton’s record of directing four films to this particular trophy. These bits of trivia came up in e-mails with Nathaniel on our post-Oscar debriefing, and they got me thinking. Because every race must have one or two directorial filmographies, taking the title of AMPAS’ favorite. Some time ago, I looked for the Diane Warrens of every category. Now, let me tell you about the preferred auteurs of every feature film Oscar race where directors are not technically up for gold…

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Drag Race RuCap: “Mammas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Drag Queens”

This episode is dedicated to the memory of Terry Covington, who passed last year.

NICK TAYLOR: In the grand tradition of the Drag Race makeover challenge, I have no idea what some of the judges thought they were watching. Hyping up how bullish Michelle is about drag family resemblance really just emphasizes how vague and stupid her standards are. Our dear eliminated queen seems to have been sacrificed primarily based on the track record, and since the judges have largely been under-acknowledging her performances of late, I call bullshit. Meanwhile, I don’t see anything to the challenge winner except honoring a good track record and cementing her place in the finale. The queens and their cowboys were a delight, reminding us how much pathos this challenge can inspire with guests who want to be there, but it’s a bitter aftertaste to end the night on.

CLÁUDIO ALVES: The first 40 minutes of this episode were representative of the best Drag Race has to offer as queer television, mixing camp and pathos, bawdiness and cute men with fagcents and even some advocating amid the fun. The last 20 minutes were some of the most infuriating nonsense I’ve ever seen on this program. These judges were trying so hard to jam their crap down my throat, I felt like I was suddenly living through Pasolini's Salo…

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The Lone Acting Nominee vs Best Picture Stars

by Cláudio Alves

In the battle of Aunt Gladys against Best Picture stars, the witch won!

I don’t know about you, but I love Oscar trivia, the more meaningless, niche, and utterly useless for prediction purposes, the better. Indeed, matters of stats and precedent feel better invoked in post-Oscar talk than in the middle of the season, when folks sometimes hold on to these analyses as if they were unshakable rules. Every year, Academy Award history gains new records, new precursor combos that failed or succeeded, and age-old assumptions that were never examined until they were proven wrong. So, let’s roll with it and enjoy the silliness of our collective Oscar obsession. Tonight, I’d like to return to the matter of Amy Madigan’s Best Supporting Actress win.

Hers is a remarkable achievement for a number of reasons, spanning from genre bias to the sheer quality of the performance at hand. Still, even odder is the fact that the Weapons witch was a lone acting nominee facing off against a lineup of women starring in Best Picture nominees. And though we live in an era when the Academy tends to privilege the movies listed in their top race in almost every other category, Madigan came out victorious. This particular scenario has only happened three times before…

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Who’s our next three-peat champion?

by Cláudio Alves

And just like that, Sean Penn became the eighth actor to win three Oscars.

With One Battle After Another, Sean Penn became the eighth person in Academy Award history to win a third acting Oscar. He follows Supporting Actor king Walter Brennan, most honored thespian ever Katharine Hepburn, Swedish superstar Ingrid Bergman, New Hollywood enfant terrible Jack Nicholson, nomination queen Meryl Streep, method actor extraordinaire Daniel Day-Lewis, and too-cool-for-school Oscar favorite Frances McDormand. This honor comes after a period when Penn was fairly removed from the awards conversation, regularly panned at Cannes for his directorial work while winning the favor of a few critics for underseen performances like those in Daddio and Asphalt City. Indeed, he seems so uninterested in playing the game that he barely campaigned and didn’t even show up to collect his prize.

Disregarding whether he deserves it or not, Penn’s victory leads me to wonder who’s next? Who is closest to joining this exclusive club? There are currently 19 two-time acting Oscar winners alive, each a different case, with some landing in the “just a matter of time” field, while others are surely “not happening.” Join me as I go over these possibilities…

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