Everyone Has The Odyssey Winning Best Picture at the 2027 Oscars. I Think It's Closer Than That, and Here's My Ballot

Let me say the awkward part first: most of these movies haven't opened yet, and I haven't seen them. In the U.S., La Bola Negra and Wild Horse Nine haven't opened yet, and Dune: Part Three is still weeks from a screening. So this isn't a review of anything. It's a read on a race, built from release dates, review scores, festival results and the way Oscar voting actually works, plus one opinion I'm willing to put my name on: the safe answer, "The Odyssey wins," is probably right and probably too comfortable.

The 2027 Oscar calendar: every date that matters

If you only want the schedule, here it is. Every date below comes from the Academy's published timeline. Anything released after December 31 doesn't count for this year, which is why December is going to be so loud.

The Best Picture field right now

I built this table myself, and the last two columns are my opinion, not the record. Scores and dates are current as of October 1. The point of it: a Best Picture winner usually needs strength and a plausible way to lose, so I wrote down both.

Why I think The Odyssey can lose

Start with the history, because it's the strongest argument against Nolan. Nolan's Oppenheimer won Best Picture, and TheWrap points out that winning it with two consecutive films has been done by only two directors, William Wyler and David Lean, and not since Lean's Lawrence of Arabia in 1962. Six decades of great directors have tried and not pulled it off. That isn't a curse. It's a reminder that voters like to spread the love.

Best Picture is the one category where being everyone's second choice can beat being a few people's first.

Now the mechanism. Best Picture is decided with a ranked ballot, so a movie that a big bloc ranks first but another bloc ranks near the bottom can lose to a movie nobody hates. TheWrap's Steve Pond is careful to note that The Odyssey's script is polarizing, the same as Oppenheimer's. I think that matters more this year, because the field has a rival that voters seem to love as much as they respect.

That challenger is La Bola Negra. It tied for Best Director at Cannes with Pawel Pawlikowski, won TIFF's People's Choice Award (a prize Deadline calls Oscar-predictive), and is Spain's official International Feature submission. Netflix gave it a 46-day theatrical window, the longest the company has ever offered, which tells you how seriously it's chasing the one trophy Netflix has never won. Add the Academy's increasingly international membership, with TheWrap noting at least one non-English Best Picture nominee for eight straight years, and the old "it's in Spanish" objection looks weaker than it did when Parasite broke through as the first non-English winner.

The counterweight is real: it's long, it's an epic about queer history that spans 1932, 1937 and 2017, and Netflix is 0 for its history at the top prize. I'm not telling you it wins. I'm telling you the "lock" language I keep reading belongs in October of a different year.

My ballot: the ten I'd nominate, ranked

Here's my own list of the ten nominees I expect, ordered by how likely I think each is to win, not just get in. I'm labeling every pick with how much I'd bet on it, because a ranking without confidence is just a mood.

1. 1

   The Odyssey

   Confidence: high to nominate, lean to win

   Nominated is close to automatic. Winning is where I hedge, for the reasons above.

2. 2

   La Bola Negra

   Confidence: high to nominate, my upset pick

   The festival love is real, and the Netflix campaign will be enormous.

3. 3

   Wild Horse Nine

   Confidence: high to nominate

   McDonagh's last film earned nine nominations, and this one has Malkovich's prize and a 95% score behind it.

4. 4

   Project Hail Mary

   Confidence: solid to nominate

   Original, beloved and profitable, which is exactly what the Academy keeps saying it wants.

5. 5

   Dune: Part Three

   Confidence: solid, sight unseen

   I'm betting on the trilogy, not the movie. That's a guess.

6. 6

   I Play Rocky

   Confidence: medium

   Peter Farrelly's crowd-pleaser is the kind of Hollywood-about-Hollywood story voters love.

7. 7

   Fjord

   Confidence: medium

   Cristian Mungiu's Palme d'Or winner. Under the new rules, festival winners like it get a second path into International Feature.

8. 8

   Elsinore

   Confidence: medium

   Andrew Scott's performance as Ian Charleson is the engine of this one.

9. 9

   Tender Loving Care

   Confidence: medium to low

   Mike Leigh says it may be his last film, and that's a story the Academy tends to reward.

10. 10

    Digger

    Confidence: low, a coin flip

    Wildly divisive, but TheWrap notes it might earn points for sheer guts. I'm including it for the nerve.

Your six-week homework plan

If you want to follow the race instead of just reading about it, this is the order I'd watch things in.

1. Start with what's already out.Catch up on The Odyssey and Project Hail Mary, the two movies the whole conversation is measured against.
2. Oct. 16: see La Bola Negra on a big screen.Netflix is giving it a real theatrical run before it streams, and it's the movie I most want your opinion on.
3. Nov. 6: Wild Horse Nine.It's the one critics keep calling the surest nominee. Watch it for Malkovich.
4. Dec. 2: La Bola Negra on Netflix.If you skipped theaters, this is your second chance, and a good moment to decide whether it's an epic or a slog.
5. Dec. 18: Dune: Part Three.The last big swing of the year, and the one that could scramble this list.

2027 Oscars questions, answered fast