Final voting is February 11-18. The 97th Oscars telecast will be broadcast on Sunday, March 2 and air live on ABC at 7 p.m. Et/ 4 p.m. Pt. We update our picks throughout awards season, so keep checking IndieWire for all our 2025 Oscar predictions.

The State of the Race

The Best Original Score nominees are “The Brutalist,” “Conclave,” Emilia Pérez,” “Wicked,” and “The Wild Robot.” Daniel Blumberg’s score for “The Brutalist” is the favorite for his unnerving “slabs of sound,” but Volker Bertelmann could win his second consecutive Oscar for “Conclave,” and “Wicked” could also be triumphant for its immense popularity.

For “The Brutalist,” Brady Corbet’s VisaVision epic, about the struggle to build an institute in post-World War II Pennsylvania, starring Oscar-nominated Adrien Brody and Guy Pearce, the director tapped experimental composer Blumberg for his second score. Envisioning the score as “slabs of sound,” the music developed into a...