What do the 2024 Spirit Awards nominations mean for the Oscar race?

“Past Lives,” “May December” and “American Fiction” got an Oscar boost on Tuesday as they topped the Independent Spirit Awards nominations with five apiece. Other top Oscar hopefuls with multiple bids include “All of Us Strangers” and “The Holdovers” with three and four, respectively. This, of course, comes with a caveat since only films with a budget below $30 million are eligible, but it’s never a bad thing to stock up on nominations anywhere and build momentum.

The nomination leaders are all up for Best Feature alongside “All of Us Strangers,” “Passages” and “We Grown Now.” “Past Lives'” haul isn’t surprising in the least since the romantic drama has been a critical and audience favorite since its Sundance Film Festival premiere in January, but it has slid down our Oscar odds in multiple categories are more contenders enter the race. Currently, “Past Lives” is only forecasted to score Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay Oscar nominations. At the Spirits, it’s also up for Best Director and Best Screenplay for Celine Song, and Best Lead Performance for Greta Lee and Teo Yoo. John Magaro was snubbed in Best Supporting Performance and the film was also MIA in editing and cinematography — elements for which it has been praised.

“May December” also saw one of its trio of stars left out in the cold. Julianne Moore failed to make the supporting cut, while Natalie Portman, who’s also nominated as a producer, nabbed a lead bid and Charles Melton turned up in supporting, continuing to his momentum from his wins at the Gotham and New York Film Critics Circle Awards last week. Since those victories, the “Riverdale” alum has cracked the top five in the Best Supporting Actor odds. “May December” also earned a directing nom for Todd Haynes, who only has one Oscar nomination to his name (original screenplay for 2002’s “Far from Heaven”), and Best First Screenplay for Samy Burch and Alex Mechanik. Both Moore and the script are in sixth place in the Oscar rankings.

“American Fiction,” which hits theaters on Dec. 15, over-performed with three acting bids for lead Jeffrey Wright and supporting players Erika Alexander and Sterling K. Brown. Like Melton, Wright recently broke into the Best Actor Oscar top five and he’s precisely the type of never-nominated veteran Oscar voters would go for in an audience hit like “American Fiction,” which won the People’s Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival. Alexander could also happen in a flexible category like supporting actress, and while supporting actor is ostensibly firmer, it’s easy to picture Brown as a TV-to-film Oscar nominee a la Bryan Cranston. Cord Jefferson‘s script also received a screenplay nomination at the Spirits, but he was snubbed in directing.

SEE 2024 Spirit Award nominations

“The Holdovers,” which is in fifth place in the Best Picture Oscar odds, was conspicuously absent in the Best Feature lineup despite a field of six nominees. It was also snubbed in directing for Alexander Payne and lead performance for Paul Giamatti, one of the expected Best Actor Oscar nominees. Foreshadowing “Sideways” redux? Probably not, but who knows? Da’Vine Joy Randolph, the Oscar frontrunner and NYFCC champ, made it into supporting, but not Dominic Sessa, who was only shortlisted in the Best Breakthrough Performance category. While they give totally different performances and are more than a decade apart in age, given Melton’s rise the past week, it certainly feels at the moment that Melton is more likely to be the young first-time supporting actor nominee at the Oscars. However, “The Holdovers” will likely be the stronger film, which could pull Sessa in.

After cleaning up at Sunday’s British Independent Film Awards with seven wins except for Andrew Scott, “All of Us Strangers” only managed one acting bid at the Spirits, just for Scott’s lead turn. The erstwhile Hot Priest is currently in seventh place in the Oscar odds. Supporting performers and Oscar dark horses Paul Mescal, Claire Foy and Jamie Bell, all of whom were nominated at BIFA (Mescal won in a tie with “How to Have Sex’s” Shaun Thomas) were nowhere to be found at the Spirits. “All of Us Strangers'” third nom was for Best Director for Andrew Haigh, whose top Oscar prospects are in Best Adapted Screenplay, where the film is in sixth.

Other Oscar long shots that got a boost in the arm include NYFCC Best Actor winner Franz Rogowski (“Passages”), former Best Actress champ Jessica Chastain (“Memory,” though her co-star and Volpi Cup winner Peter Sarsgaard was snubbed), Teyana Taylor (“A Thousand and One”) and Glenn Howerton (“BlackBerry”). On the other end, eligible films that got blanked completely include “Priscilla” and “The Iron Claw,” whose leads, Cailee Spaeny and Zac Efron, are in the top 10 in the Oscar odds.

Last year, “Everything Everywhere All at Once” swept the Spirit Awards, claiming seven prizes from eight nominations en route to its unprecedented Oscar dominance. Safe to say, there won’t be that type of correlation this year, not just because no film got more than five Spirit noms, but the Oscar race may have too many big studio dogs — and successful ones at that — for a Spirit fave to take down.

Make your predictions at Gold Derby now. Download our free and easy app for Apple/iPhone devices or Android (Google Play) to compete against legions of other fans plus our experts and editors for best prediction accuracy scores. See our latest prediction champs. Can you top our esteemed leaderboards next? Always remember to keep your predictions updated because they impact our latest racetrack odds, which terrify Hollywood chiefs and stars. Don’t miss the fun. Speak up and share your huffy opinions in our famous forums where 5,000 showbiz leaders lurk every day to track latest awards buzz. Everybody wants to know: What do you think? Who do you predict and why?