The Oscar race snapped into a new shape this week after the Academy announced nominations for the 98th Academy Awards on Jan. 22, with “Sinners” setting a nominations record and several perceived front-runners landing unevenly across key categories. Danielle Brooks and Lewis Pullman revealed the nominees from the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater, with the ceremony set for March 15 and final voting running Feb. 26 to March 5, according to the Academy press office.
In a post-nominations dispatch from Park City, TheWrap’s “The Voting Booth” singled out “Sinners” as the morning’s defining result. The film earned 16 nominations, surpassing the long-standing record of 14, and the column argued the haul reflected strength across both above-the-line and craft categories rather than a single-category surge. The writer highlighted the acting trio that made it in—Michael B. Jordan, Wunmi Mosaku and Delroy Lindo—calling Lindo’s nod the biggest personal jolt of the readout.
The same piece cast the sharpest shadow over Jafar Panahi’s Cannes Palme d’Or winner “It Was Just an Accident,” which landed nominations outside the top race the column expected, missing Best Picture and Best Director. The writer framed that absence as a lost opportunity for voters to amplify a filmmaker facing real-world pressure, pointing to Panahi’s December sentence in Iran—handed down in absentia, with a travel ban attached—as the campaign’s unavoidable backdrop.
Beyond the two headline narratives, the column ticked through smaller shocks that signal where branches drew their lines: a cited acting miss for Chase Infiniti in “One Battle After Another,” Park Chan-wook’s “No Other Choice” going home empty-handed, and a Best Sound nomination for “Sirât” that the writer described as historic for an all-woman team. It also flagged lighter, meme-ready moments—“The Ugly Stepsister” showing up in makeup and hairstyling, and “Avatar” landing in costume design—proof that nomination morning still makes room for left-field joy.
