It's May Miniseries time!! Presenting CATEGORY IS...! We're in a moment of the Academy Awards introducing new categories for the first time in many years, and we'll be spending the whole month discussing the categories already announced and a few we think should be! First up: Best Casting! This episode, we discuss the Oscar's newest category and how we felt about the nominees for 2025, how we would like to see the category evolve in the years to come, what shortlisted films we think might have deserved the nomination, and we close the episode with the most important part: we name 10 films in movie history that we would retroactively award with a Casting Oscar.

The Academy Award for Best Casting

THR's Casting Society Poll for What Would Have Won

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The nominees are:

Hamnet

Marty Supreme

One Battle After Another

The Secret Agent

Sinners

In a sense, this is a bit of a shot in the dark, because no one really knows how this award is going to go. It's the first new Oscar in a quarter of a century, so there are no patterns to observe and no expectations.

Will the Casting Oscar reward films with multiple nominations (Sentimental Value isn't here...) or focus more on how casting directors fill out all the smaller roles? Will there be a preference for larger ensembles? Will it tend to come along with another acting prize? Will it evolve into sort of a consolation Best Picture prize?

What we do have to go on is how this award has panned out in other ceremonies and with other awards bodies. It might be an easier task this year that in most, because the general consensus seems to be that this belongs to Sinners.

The film won Best Casting at the Critics Choice and SAG awards, although it missed at BAFTAs to I Swear, the home-grown favorite. Casting director Francine Maisler is also a legend in the industry and it's likely people will readily vote for her.

Even without the precursors, it seems like this would've come down to OBAA vs. Sinners anyway, and voters may very well have just given it to the movie they didn't vote for in Best Picture.

But we'll just have to wait and see.

Who will win: Sinners

But look out for: One Battle After Another

Who I'd vote for: Sinners

If I could add one more: Sirāt OR The Plague

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Ah yes, Part 3. It’s kind of like a trilogy…except we aren’t halfway through yet. So it’s like a trilogy, if…you don’t understand prefixes. Getting technical with this one, so bust out your kinetograph, your Rolodex, your splicing tape, and your 3D rendering software of choice. Here’s Part 1. Don’t forget Part 2. Best Casting The inaugural Best Casting field is a very good one. This race…