91st Academy Awards (2019)

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Oscars 2019: A way-too-early look at next year's Academy Awards contenders

Oscar hasn't even dried off yet after swimming with The Shape of Water and already it's time to think about the big fish at next year's 91st Academy Awards.

While much of the awards season bait won't be out until fall, the good stuff can come at any time: Oscar winner Get Out arrived in February 2017 — and that bodes well for Black Panther, which is making scads of money as a full-on cultural phenomenon. Oscar hasn't even dried off yet after swimming with The Shape of Water and already it's time to think about the big fish at next year's 91st Academy Awards.

While much of the awards season bait won't be out until fall, the good stuff can come at any time: Oscar winner Get Out arrived in February 2017 — and that bodes well for Black Panther, which is making scads of money as a full-on cultural phenomenon.

So which movies could loom large at the 2019 Oscars ceremony? Here's a way-too-early look ahead:

Best picture

Black Panther is bound to be a player in technical categories like costume, makeup, production design and special effects, but more importantly, it could become the first superhero film ever to be nominated for Hollywood's biggest prize. The Academy likes historical films, and Adam McKay's as-yet-untitled film centering on former vice president Dick Cheney (Dec. 14) fits the bill. The Irishman, Martin Scorsese's new Mob movie that just finished filming with Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, seems like a safe bet if it's released in time for consideration.

Steve McQueen and Barry Jenkins, directors of respective best-picture winners 12 Years a Slave and Moonlight, return with a pair of female-centric crime thrillers: McQueen's Widows (Nov. 16) and Jenkins' If Beale Street Could Talk (release date not yet set). The latter may be in the race with La La Land's Damien Chazelle again: Chazelle's last two films both earned best-picture nominations, so the streak could continue with his Neil Armstrong biopic First Man (Oct. 12).

Actor

Gary Oldman won the category this year for his Winston Churchill transformation in Darkest Hour, paving the way for Christian Bale in 2019: The one-time Batman gained weight to get the right look as Dick Cheney for McKay's political film. Steve Carell has a double feature of noteworthy movies: He stars as the dad of a meth-addicted son in Beautiful Boy (Oct. 18) and as an assault victim who builds a miniature World War II battlefield as part of his recovery in Robert Zemeckis' The Women of Marwen (Nov. 21).

Ryan Gosling could get back in the best-actor field as Chazelle's Armstrong in First Man. And Lucas Hedges, who earned a supporting nod for Manchester By the Sea, plays a Baptist preacher's son forced into gay conversion therapy in Boy Erased (Sept. 28).

Actress

Saoirse Ronan is only 23 and already has three Oscar nominations — No. 4 might come playing Mary Stuart, who attempted to overthrow her cousin Queen Elizabeth I, in the historical epic Mary, Queen of Scots (Nov. 2). Melissa McCarthy earned a nod for Bridesmaids, yet breaks serious to play disgraced celebrity biographer Lee Israel in Can You Ever Forgive Me? (Oct. 19). Viola Davis heads up McQueen's Widows as one of four women who have to pull off a heist after their criminal husbands are killed.

Oscars favorite Glenn Close plays the devoted spouse of a Nobel Prize winner who reaches her breaking point in The Wife (release date not yet set), while Cate Blanchett stars as the anxiety-filled and AWOL title mom of Richard Linklater's Where'd You Go, Bernadette (Oct. 19).

Felicity Jones inhabits the role of young Ruth Bader Ginsburg in On the Basis of Sex (release date not yet set), and Emily Blunt also takes on an iconic woman — this one with a spoonful of sugar instead of a gavel — in Mary Poppins Returns (Dec. 25).

Supporting actor

Heath Ledger opened the door for supervillains snagging Oscars, and Michael B. Jordan, who impressed everybody with his nuanced Black Panther antagonist Erik Killmonger, will be hard to ignore.

Timothée Chalamet, nominated for best actor this year in Call Me By Your Name, could be up again in the supporting or lead categories as the drug-addicted youngster in Beautiful Boy. Boy Erased raises two possibilities: Russell Crowe as the small-town preacher and Joel Edgerton (who also directs) as the head conversion therapist.

Honestly, McKay's Cheney film alone could take up most of the field: Newly minted Oscar winner Sam Rockwell is President George W. Bush, Carell plays Donald Rumsfeld and Tyler Perry co-stars as Colin Powell. Or maybe 2019 is the year Lin-Manuel Miranda achieves his EGOT (he's already won three Tonys, three Grammys and one Emmy) playing a charismatic lamplighter in Mary Poppins Returns.

Supporting actress

There's a chance Margot Robbie could join her Queen of Scots co-star Ronan in lead-actress competition, or go here inhabiting the crown of Queen Elizabeth I. Amy Ryan and Nicole Kidman play the struggling mothers of Beautiful Boy and Boy Erased, respectively. Amy Adams — with five career nominations and no wins -— stars opposite Bale as Lynne Cheney in McKay's movie. And Cynthia Erivo, who already has some awards cred as a Tony winner for A Color Purple, makes her big-screen debut as one of McQueen's Widows.

from USA Today