Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer Named Best Picture at 2024 Oscars in Impressive Awards Season Sweep

Oppenheimer is this year's Best Picture winner!

At the 2024 Oscars ceremony, hosted by Jimmy Kimmel on Sunday, the film took home the top prize of the night. The category's other nominees were: American Fiction, Anatomy of a Fall, Barbie, The Holdovers, Killers of the Flower Moon, Maestro, Past Lives, Poor Things and The Zone of Interest. 

"I think any of us who make movies know that you kind of dream of this moment. You know you do, right? I could deny it, but I have been dreaming about this moment for so long, but it seemed so unlikely that it would ever actually happen, and now I am standing here and everything has kind of gone out of my head," producer Emma Thomas said on stage after the win.

Continuing her speech, Thomas credited her husband and director Christopher Nolan. "The reason this movie was the movie it was was because of Chris Nolan," she said. "He’s singular, he’s brilliant and I am so grateful for you."

Thomas also gave a shoutout to the cast and crew of the film, saying, "The thing that is fantastic about our jobs is that it’s about collaboration, it’s about teamwork and our team was just incredible in this movie, so thank you to all of them, both cast and crew."

Concluding her speech, Thomas thanked Universal, IMAX and the theaters before calling out her children, Flora, Rory, Oliver and Magnus, and her late mother.

"It’s U.K. Mother’s Day so I am thinking of my mom who is no longer with us today," she said. "And my mother-in-law, Christina, who is here with my dad, so thank you. Oh! And thank you to the Academy! I’m so honored to be here!"

With the win, Oppenheimer completes an impressive awards season sweep, including several wins on Sunday in the Best Actor category for Cillian Murphy, Best Director for Nolan and Best Supporting Actor for Robert Downey Jr.

Oppenheimer became one of last year’s biggest box-office hits and the highest-grossing biopic of all time. The film tells the story of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the physicist who invented the nuclear bomb used in World War II. It also touches on his political activities after the war and alleged ties to the Communist Party at the height of the Cold War.

The critically acclaimed film’s large ensemble cast includes Murphy, Emily Blunt, Downey Jr., Matt Damon and Florence Pugh, among others.

Oppenheimer led with the most nominations of any film this year. 

Nolan recently told the Associated Press of the response to the film, "We were really interested and excited, in particular, to see young people responding to a piece of history."

"I keep coming back to the unique nature of the story. I think it is one of the great American stories," the Dark Knight director added. "It encompasses so much that’s important and dramatic about our history. That gives audiences a lot to hang to, when you get a great group of actors and incredible cast like we have, you can make this feel real and emotionally accessible."

The Best Picture category was filled with many other impressive films this year.

American Fiction, adapted by director Cord Jefferson from Percival Everett’s 2001 novel Erasure, follows a Black writer named Thelonious “Monk” Ellison (Jeffrey Wright), who writes a novel titled My Pafology under a pen name that parodies books by other Black American authors filled with racial stereotypes. Monk's book unexpectedly turns into a success, leaving him to grapple with fame based on a fake persona.

Director Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall rolled into this year’s Oscars with a total of five nominations. The courtroom drama — which won the Palme d’Or at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival — depicts Sandra Hüller as a woman who is charged with her husband’s death. The film follows the subsequent trial and unpacks the widow’s turbulent relationship with her spouse. 

Greta Gerwig’s Barbie entered Sunday's Oscars ceremony with eight nominations. The box-office hit features a star-studded cast consisting of Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling, America Ferrera, Will Ferrell, Kate McKinnon and more. 

Bringing the iconic Mattel doll and her all-pink world to life, the film explores themes of girlhood, existentialism, feminism and toxic masculinity. 

In a statement after his Best Supporting Actor nomination, Gosling acknowledged Robbie and Gerwig on making the film such a success.

"There is no Ken without Barbie, and there is no Barbie movie without Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie, the two people most responsible for this history-making, globally-celebrated film," he said. "No recognition would be possible for anyone on the film without their talent, grit and genius."

The Holdovers had five nominations going into Sunday's ceremony, including recognition for stars Paul Giamatti and Da'Vine Joy Randolph. 

The film follows a teen named Angus Tully (Dominic Sessa) at a boarding school in New England in 1970 who is left to spend the holiday season at the school with unpopular teacher Paul Hunham (Giamatti) and the school's cook, Mary (Randolph), who is grieving her son's death in the Vietnam War.

Directed by Alexander Payne (Election), the film revolves around Angus, Paul and Mary's time spent together over Christmas and New Year's as the unlikely trio forge an odd friendship.

Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon depicts the real-life events of the Osage murders during the early 20th century. At that time, Native American people living on Oklahoma's Osage Reservation financially prospered from the oil found on their land — until White residents orchestrated a series of killings targeting the Osage people. 

The historical drama stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, Brendan Fraser and breakout actress Lily Gladstone.

Maestro received seven nominations at this year's Oscars. Among them, writer-actor-director Bradley Cooper earned one for his performance as Leonard Bernstein, the late American composer and conductor. Carey Mulligan, who plays Bernstein's wife Felicia Montealegre, also received a nomination for her performance.

Though Bernstein held a prolific career in music, Maestro largely focuses on the evolution of his complicated relationship with Montealegre over decades. The Netflix movie makes for Cooper's second effort as a director, after his acclaimed 2018 film A Star Is Born.

Celine Song’s Past Lives features Greta Lee as Nora, a woman who reconnects with her childhood friend Hae Sung (Teo Yoo) decades after she and her family left South Korea.

The A24 movie earned one of the award season's early major prizes when it won best feature film at the 33rd annual Gotham Awards in November. It later won best feature at the 39th Independent Spirit Awards. At the Academy Awards, the movie received one other nomination for Best Original Screenplay. 

Poor Things reunited Emma Stone, 35, with director Yorgos Lanthimos, whom she previously worked on 2018's The Favourite.

As Bella Baxter — a dead woman resurrected with the brain of a baby by a scientist played by Willem Dafoe — Stone jaunts around Victorian London with Mark Ruffalo’s Duncan Wedderburn. The film follows Bella as she learns how to live in human society and grows into an advocate for women's rights.

It's the second-most nominated film of the year, with 11 nods.

The Zone of Interest follows the daily lives of Rudolf Höss, the military officer in charge of Auschwitz, and his family at their home just outside the concentration camp during the Holocaust.

Director Jonathan Glazer, known for movies like 2004's Birth and 2013's Under the Skin, told The Guardian the "reason I made this film is to try to restate our close proximity to this terrible event that we think of as in the past."

"For me," he continued, "it is not ever in the past, and right now, I think something in me is aware — and fearful — that these things are on the rise again with the growth of rightwing populism everywhere. The road that so many people took is a few steps away. It is always just a few steps away."

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