- Title: 'Sinners' or 'One Battle After Another' - who will triumph on Oscar night?
- Date: 11th March 2026
- Summary: LONDON, ENGLAND, UNITED KINGDOM (RECENT - FEBRUARY 10, 2026) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (English) MOVIES EDITOR AT DIGITAL SPY, IAN SANDWELL, ON OSCARS LEADING ACTRESS CATEGORY, SAYING: "If there's a category I'm almost hundred percent sure on it's best actress, it's going to be Jessie Buckley. She's won everywhere else. It feels like all the momentum is with her. And I just do
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- Keywords: 'One Battle After Another' 'Sinners' Academy Awards Jessie Buckley Leonardo DiCaprio Michael B. Jordan Oscars Paul Thomas Anderson Ryan Coogler Sean Penn Timothee Chalamet
- Location: VARIOUS
- City: VARIOUS
- Country: US
- Topics: Arts/Culture/Entertainment,Film,North America
- Reuters ID: LVA00D260510032026RP1
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: Awards season comes to an end on Sunday (March 15) with Hollywood's biggest night, the Oscars.
Vampire thriller "Sinners" leads nominations at the 98th Academy Awards, with a record 16 nods, positioning the Warner Bros film as the frontrunner for best picture and pitting star Michael B. Jordan against Timothee Chalamet and Leonardo DiCaprio as rivals for best actor.
"Sinners", a tale that celebrates blues music and Black culture and in which Jordan plays twin brothers who set up a juke joint in the segregation-era U.S. South and are confronted by vampires, claimed the Actor Award for best movie cast. Jordan was named best film actor.
“‘Sinners’ seems to have kind of the early frontrunner momentum and you can never dismiss that," Tim Richards, founder and chief executive of cinema operator Vue, told Reuters in early February.
"But ‘One Battle After Another' is such a powerful film with such incredible performances that I actually think it's going to take it for the night."
The action-packed dark comedy, also a Warner Bros film, features DiCaprio as a one-time radical turned weed-smoking father of a teenager who is kidnapped. It won best film and best director for Paul Thomas Anderson at Britain's BAFTA Awards.
“It feels like at the moment it's Paul Thomas Anderson’s to lose," Ian Sandwell, movies editor at Digital Spy, said of the best director category, also speaking in early February.
"He won at the Directors Guild Awards and there's only been eight occasions in the near 100-year history of the DGAs where it hasn't matched the Oscars," he said, adding his preference for best director would be Ryan Coogler for "Sinners".
While Chalamet picked up early prizes, including a Golden Globe, for playing an ambitious table tennis player in "Marty Supreme", he lost out to Robert Aramayo for "I Swear" at the BAFTAs and Jordan at the Actor Awards.
One category that seems more certain is leading actress - with Jessie Buckley sweeping all the prizes so far for her portrayal of William Shakespeare's wife in emotional drama "Hamnet".
"Jessie Buckley is going to walk away with an Oscar and certainly deserves it," Richards said.
"It feels like all the momentum is with her. And I just don't see anyone else competing with her on the night," Sandwell said.
While Richards put Sean Penn as the frontrunner for supporting actor for his performance as the villainous Col. Steven J. Lockjaw in "One Battle After Another", Sandwell said both supporting acting categories were more open.
Penn's co-star Teyana Taylor and "Sentimental Value" actor Stellan Skarsgaard won their categories at the Golden Globes, while "Sinners" actor Wunmi Mosaku triumphed as best supporting actress at the BAFTAs. "Frankenstein" actor Jacob Elordi won best supporting actor at the Critics' Choice Awards.
Sandwell said that if there were to be a surprise on the night, it could be Delroy Lindo winning the supporting actor statuette for his portrayal of musician Delta Slim in "Sinners".
“It's his first ever Oscar nomination. He's fantastic in ‘Sinners’ as well. So it would be deserved if it happened. And It just feels like that kind of sometimes the Academy gets a bit romantic and they're like, 'Oh, we've got this star, long glittering career, hasn't quite had the recognition to date, didn't get it at the BAFTAs either'," he said.
"So I feel like that would be a really welcome surprise. I don't think anyone would complain on the night."
(Production: Will Russell, Marie-Louise Gumuchian) - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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