‘Oppenheimer’ is looking to break this longtime Best Picture winner Oscar trend

For close to 20 years, there has been a pretty consistent roadmap for the release and subsequent campaign of a film aiming for Best Picture at the Academy Awards. Basically, this is how it goes: premiere the film at one of the major film festivals (typically one in the fall like Toronto, Venice or Telluride), kick-start the campaign, generate buzz, get your actors on the campaign trail, then have a theatrical release and hope that momentum sustains the entirety of awards season up until Oscar night.

However, we have seen some slight variance to that protocol over the past two years, and this year, that map could be ripped up altogether if the presumed frontrunner, “Oppenheimer,” takes home the big prize on Oscar night.

In 2007, the Best Picture winner was Martin Scorsese’s “The Departed,” which went straight to a theatrical release in 2006 sans film festivals. However, since ’07, every film that has won Best Picture had it’s world premiere at a festival. The majority of these (11 of 16) launched at one of the major fall festivals (Venice, Telluride or TIFF). Three of those past 16 winners premiered a bit earlier in the year at Cannes in May. The past two Best Picture winners (“CODA” in 2022 and “Everything Everywhere All at Once” in 2023) deviated from this trend slightly. While they both premiered at a film festival in 2021 and ’22, respectively, they came out much earlier in the year, rolled out at Sundance and South by Southwest (January and March, respectively). This means that both movies sustained campaigns of a year or more.

However, this season the one film that seems like a near-lock to take home Best Picture could well break the festival pattern that has held strong since “No Country for Old Men” won the top honor at the Oscars in 2008. And that film is “Oppenheimer,” which this far has emerged with the biggest prize at the Golden Globes, the Critics’ Choices and BAFTA along with numerous other critics’ awards. And it didn’t premiere at a festival. Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster, which happens to also be the highest grossing biopic of all time, went straight to theaters this past summer, premiering alongside “Barbie” last July 21 in the cinematic phenomenon known as Barbenheimer.

“Oppenheimer” currently sits in first place in Gold Derby’s combined odds for Best Picture at 6/1.

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