Illustration: James Clapham
Welcome back, friends and fools, to year FIVE of the Vulture Movies Fantasy League. We are about to turn the corner into a fall movie season that is packed with box-office behemoths, visionary auteurs bringing their latest films into the bosom of awards season, and a whole lotta questions about whether a vampire movie about race in America can play the long game all the way to Oscar gold.
If you’ve played the Movies Fantasy League before, the game hasn’t changed much; if you’re new, welcome to the circus. You can check out the rules for how to play on our MFL hub, but here is the nutshell summary: You select a roster of exactly eight films within a budget of 100 imaginary dollars. Once the scoring phase of the game begins, the films you’ve drafted will accumulate points for achieving milestones in box-office take, precursor awards/nominations, critical approval, and more. The movies we expect to do best will cost more, so your first task will be to manage your budget wisely.
In order to help you make wise choices, we have assembled the following draft guide. Below, you will find a listing for every movie that’s eligible to draft in the MFL this year. You can see how much they cost, the talent behind them, what film festivals they’ve played, and when they will debut to the public, either in theaters or on streaming (if they haven’t already).
Movies begin to accumulate points on kickoff day, September 26. Any movie that opens on that day or after is eligible to earn box-office points. Anything that has already opened, or will open before the 26th, is box-office ineligible and will be denoted as such in the guide. Between September 26 and the final deadline on December 18, you’ll still be able to draft a team, but during that span, you will only be able to draft films that haven’t started accruing points. That means you’ll be limited to unreleased movies that haven’t been nominated for any awards. So you’ll have to decide carefully when you want to draft your roster. We’ll remove movies from this guide when they’re no longer eligible to be drafted to avoid any confusion and disappointment.
It’s going to be an exciting few months, so why waste any time — read ahead and start researching!
➼ I’m not ready yet! Remind me to draft before the deadline:
Director: Jon M. Chu
Stars: Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande, Jeff Goldblum, Michelle Yeoh
Release date: November 21
Our top point-earner from last season, Wicked, was priced to sell at $20, mostly because there was still a lot of uncertainty around whether the film would bomb with critics (and subsequently awards voters). It didn’t, though, so last year’s success means a trip back to Oz for your fantasy squad won’t come cheap.
➼ Box-office ineligible
Director: Ryan Coogler
Stars: Michael B. Jordan, Hailee Steinfeld, Delroy Lindo
Release date: Already released
Sinners is pretty much the only known quantity from the first half of 2025 that you can feel confident will be a major part of this year’s Oscar race. And while you won’t be able to benefit from the film’s hefty box office, the confidence of being able to select a film that you already know critics and audience loved could be worth the price tag.
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Stars: Leonardo DiCaprio, Benicio del Toro
Release date: September 26
Paul Thomas Anderson hasn’t whiffed with the Academy since 2002’s Punch-Drunk Love (though it’s worth noting that 2014’s Inherent Vice only got a screenplay nomination). Academy members seem to be big PTA fans. Combine that with DiCaprio as a former ’60s radical, plus Oscar winners like del Toro and Sean Penn and breakthrough-ready talent like Teyana Taylor and Chase Infiniti, and things are looking good. Plus, Warner Bros. is said to have pumped up to $175 million into this project, so you better believe it’s going to push hard to get a return on that investment.
Director: Noah Baumbach
Film festivals: Venice, Telluride, New York
Stars: George Clooney, Adam Sandler
Release date: November 14
Baumbach had his big Oscar breakthrough with Marriage Story several years ago; now he’s back with a very Oscar-friendly story about an aged movie star (Clooney) and his loyal agent (Sandler). Oscar narratives abound: Clooney has big “we’re so back” potential, while the already-percolating Supporting Actor campaign for Sandler feels like it’s been in the works for 25 years. This has every indication of being Netflix’s top-tier awards push.
Director: Joachim Trier
Stars: Renate Reinsve, Stellan Skarsgård
Film festivals: Cannes, Telluride, Toronto, New York
Release date: November 17
While it fell short of winning the Palme d’Or at Cannes, Sentimental Value did emerge from the festival with buzz as the most likely of the Cannes competition titles to follow the path to Oscar victory recently traversed by recent Palme winners Anatomy of a Fall and Anora.
Director: James Cameron
Stars: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña
Release date: December 19
The first Avatar made $2.9 billion worldwide and got nine Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director. The second Avatar made $2.3 billion worldwide and got four Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture but not Best Director. Even with that rate of diminishing returns, the third Avatar should still bring in plenty of points. The question is whether this third one can deliver something that puts Cameron back in the Oscar conversation.
Director: Guillermo del Toro
Stars: Oscar Isaac, Jacob Elordi
Film festivals: Venice, Toronto
Release date: October 17
Del Toro has been hot with Oscar ever since The Shape of Water took Best Picture eight years ago. His strange but artful Pinocchio adaptation turned out to be a huge MFL bargain a couple years ago after it ran the table in the animation categories all season. The question is how much Netflix as the distributor will cap Frankenstein’s value. It’s giving del Toro’s film the rare three-week theatrical run as opposed to the customary two, but that doesn’t mean you should expect much in the way of box-office points. Still, given del Toro’s reputation — and the recent performance of other high-end gothic horror like Nosferatu — this should be a strong player across at least the craft awards (production design, costume, cinematography, visual effects) all season.
Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
Stars: Jesse Plemons, Emma Stone
Film festivals: Venice, Telluride
Release date: October 24
With The Favourite and Poor Things, Lanthimos has directed two previous films to double-digit Oscar nomination totals, including Best Picture/Best Director nominations and Best Actress wins for Olivia Colman and Emma Stone. Whether he can do the same with a film from writer Will Tracy (Succession, hooray!; The Menu and The Regime, hmmm) remains to be seen. Plemons and Stone reunite after Lanthimos’s perplexing Kinds of Kindness, but Focus Features is putting out all the indicators that this has big Oscar ambitions.
Director: Scott Cooper
Stars: Jeremy Allen White, Jeremy Strong
Film festivals: New York
Release date: October 24
Last year, Searchlight pushed the Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown all the way to major Oscar nominations and a near Best Actor win for Timothée Chalamet. This year, 20th Century Studios wants in on that action with its Bruce Springsteen biopic starring TV’s most intense performer, Jeremy Allen White. Cooper has already put a guitar in one actor’s hands and directed him to an Oscar — Jeff Bridges in Crazy Heart — and Strong is already starting to build Supporting Actor buzz after his nomination last year.
Directors: Jared Bush, Byron Howard
Stars: Jason Bateman, Ginnifer Goodwin
Release date: November 26
Last year, Moana 2 opened on Thanksgiving weekend and racked up $225 million right out of the gate, despite pretty much everyone agreeing the film wasn’t good. The original Zootopia cleared the original Moana’s domestic take by nearly $100 million. That math could really end up working in your favor.
Director: Benny Safdie
Stars: Dwayne Johnson, Emily Blunt
Film festivals: Venice, Toronto
Release date: October 3
Of the two Solitary Safdie Sibling movies this year, this is the one about MMA fighting. Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt reunite from their Jungle Cruise days to play real-life Ultimate Fighting Champion Mark Kerr (him) and his loyal, understandably concerned wife (her). If Blunt ends up with two Oscar nominations to her name for playing the Wife, that’s going to be wild, but that’s a conversation for another day. This movie is going to be either too middlebrow for awards appeal or the sentimental fave of awards season. (And I could see A24 making it a bit of a box-office hit, too.)
Director: Luca Guadagnino
Stars: Julia Roberts, Andrew Garfield, Ayo Edebiri
Film festivals: Venice, New York
Release date: October 10
Guadagnino struck out, Oscar-wise, with his two features last year, Challengers and Queer. But this year, he returns with Oscar winner Julia Roberts, Oscar nominee Andrew Garfield, and Emmy winner Ayo Edebiri in a hot-button drama about scandal and the generation gap in academia. Will this be Tár lite or something altogether trashier? It remains to be seen.
➼ Box-office ineligible
Director: Edward Berger
Stars: Colin Farrell, Tilda Swinton
Release date: October 15
Berger has directed two straight films to Oscar nominations in All Quiet on the Western Front and Conclave; he’s trying for his third with this story about a maxed-out gambler (Farrell) who finds himself on the skids in Macau. The trailer looks intense, and Farrell’s part seems juicy. Don’t expect box-office points, however, as Netflix is giving this its customary two-week qualifying theatrical run, where box-office receipts are not usually reported.
Director: Hikari
Stars: Brendan Fraser, Akira Emoto
Film festivals: Toronto
Release date: November 21
One big-time potential crowd-pleaser candidate for awards season is this film from Japanese director Hikari (Netflix’s Beef). It centers on Fraser as an American actor living in Tokyo who takes a job as a stand-in for various roles in real people’s lives. Lost in Translation meets a softer version of Yorgos Lanthimos’s Alps? Could really connect with people.
Director: Chloé Zhao
Stars: Jessie Buckley, Paul Mescal
Film festivals: Telluride, New York
Release date: November 27
Zhao joins the laundry list of Oscar-winning directors releasing films this fall, though she’s looking to bounce back from her Marvel misadventure Eternals. Here, she’s adapting Maggie O’Farrell’s novel, a fictionalized account of William Shakespeare and his wife, Anne, in the aftermath of losing their young son, Hamnet. Yes, that name does look and sound awfully similar to Hamlet. Shakespeare has done well at the Oscars in the past — just ask Gwyneth Paltrow and Judi Dench how they got their trophies — and both Buckley and Mescal are young actors who have been recently admitted into the fold by Oscar voters (she was nominated for 2021’s The Lost Daughter, he for 2022’s Aftersun) and are seeking their first wins. That recipe could add up to a contender.
Director: Josh Safdie
Stars: Timothée Chalamet, Gwyneth Paltrow
Release date: December 25
The year’s second solo Safdie is also a sporting affair, though in this case it’s about ping-pong champion Marty Mauser (Chalamet) and his exploits at the table-tennis … uh, table. This one looks quirkier than Josh’s more blunt instrument (no pun intended, Emily), but Chalamet has scored at the December box office two years in a row now (Wonka in 2023, A Complete Unknown last year). Maybe the prince of Christmas will deliver again.
Director: Joachim Rønning
Stars: Jared Leto, Greta Lee
Release date: October 10
Red flags exist if you’re looking for them. Rønning’s most prominent titles are a middling collection that includes the fifth Pirates of the Caribbean movie, the second Maleficent, and Young Woman and the Sea. 2010’s Tron: Legacy made decent money but left a lot of its audience nonplussed. But there’s a lot to be said for a visual spectacle (visual effects and sound awards feel like they’re in play), and it’s going to play in Imax for a couple weeks, which should help box-office totals.
Director: Jafar Panahi
Stars: Vahid Mobasseri, Ebrahim Azizi
Film festivals: Cannes, Telluride, Toronto, New York
Release date: October 15
Four of the last five winners of the Palme d’Or at Cannes have gone on to become Best Picture nominees at the Oscars, with two of them (Parasite and Anora) winning. So there’s definitely reason to be optimistic about It Was Just an Accident. Even if the film isn’t as broadly appealing as recent Palme winners, there’s a good chance it follows the awards trajectory of previous Cannes hits like The Zone of Interest.
Director: Kathryn Bigelow
Stars: Idris Elba, Rebecca Ferguson
Film festivals: Venice, New York
Release date: October 24
Oscar winner Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker) returns to global politics, only this time, the crisis is fictional. The film depicts a U.S. White House scrambling to deal with an impending missile strike on America. It’s been a while since Bigelow was a major player on the Oscar scene, but working off of a script from the screenwriter of Jackie (and, um, The Maze Runner), interest will be piqued.
Director: Bradley Cooper
Stars: Will Arnett, Laura Dern
Film festivals: New York
Bradley Cooper’s stand-up comedy movie? Bradley Cooper’s divorced-guy movie? Bradley Cooper’s SmartLess movie? (Sean Hayes also co-stars.) Whatever this movie turns out to be, Cooper always makes awards season more interesting.
Director: Bill Condon
Stars: Jennifer Lopez, Diego Luna, Tonatiuh
Film festivals: Sundance
Release date: October 10
Jennifer Lopez doing a full-blown musical from the director of Dreamgirls sounds like it could be a dream come true … or a fantastic nightmare. Either way, it will be a spectacle. In the old days, Lopez would be assured of a Golden Globe nomination no matter how it turned out. The Globes have gotten more buttoned-up lately, though, so we’ll see how it goes.
Director: Derek Cianfrance
Stars: Channing Tatum, Kirsten Dunst
Film festivals: Toronto
Release date: October 10
There was a while there in the 2010s where Channing Tatum was doing daring work with directors like Bennett Miller, Quentin Tarantino, the Wachowskis, and the Coens. Then he seemed to retreat into safer rom-com fare. Perhaps teaming up with the director of Blue Valentine and The Place Beyond the Pines for a film about a thief hiding out in the walls of a Toys “R” Us will get critics and audiences excited once again.
Director: James Vanderbilt
Stars: Rami Malek, Russell Crowe
Film festivals: Toronto
Release date: November 7
Vanderbilt wrote the screenplay for David Fincher’s Zodiac, among others, but the only film he’s directed was the real-life journalism drama Truth that premiered in Toronto before fizzling in awards season. Hopefully history doesn’t repeat itself for this biographical drama/psychological thriller about the trials of Nazi officials after World War II. Malek, who hasn’t been nominated for an Oscar since he won for playing Freddie Mercury in 2018, plays a psychologist who examines the Nazi officials before trial. Crowe, who hasn’t been nominated since 2001’s A Beautiful Mind, plays Hitler’s second-in-command, Hermann Göring.
Director: Dan Trachtenberg
Stars: Elle Fanning, Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi
Release date: November 7
After making the direct-to-Hulu Predator-universe movie Prey feel like a legitimate blockbuster a few years ago, Trachtenberg gets to take the next film in the series to theaters where it belongs. With a plot that pairs an outcast Predator (Schuster-Koloamatangi) with an unlikely ally in Fanning’s Thia, Badlands could be the horror-inflected large-format movie that succeeds in the window between Tron and Wicked.
Director: Clint Bentley
Stars: Joel Edgerton, Felicity Jones
Film festivals: Sundance, Toronto
Release date: November 7
The buzziest film out of Sundance this year was this lyrical period piece from Bentley, co-writer of last year’s Sing Sing. (That film’s director, Greg Kwedar, co-wrote Train Dreams as well.) Netflix promptly bought it up, which means you shouldn’t expect box-office points, but this kind of movie is an awards play anyway. And Train Dreams could definitely be this year’s indie darling.
Director: Emma Tammi
Stars: Josh Hutcherson, Matthew Lillard
Release date: December 5
Two years ago, the first Five Nights at Freddy’s took me by surprise, and I dramatically underpriced it before it exploded for $137 million domestic on the backs of its legion of video-game fans. Not this year! If you want those box-office points, you’re gonna have to pay for them.
Director: Rian Johnson
Stars: Daniel Craig, Josh O’Connor, Glenn Close
Film festivals: Toronto
Release date: December 12
Rian Johnson’s two previous Benoit Blanc mysteries were great fun, and both got Best Original Screenplay nominations … and nothing more. That might just be the level for these movies … unless cast members like Close or O’Connor make a particularly attractive case for a supporting performance campaign. There’s also the fact that, with Netflix distributing this one as it did with Glass Onion, you won’t be getting box-office points.
Director: Craig Brewer
Stars: Hugh Jackman, Kate Hudson
Release date: December 25
Jackman and Hudson — who both have put their musical skills to work onscreen before — play a husband-and-wife Neil Diamond tribute act. Brewer is a talented filmmaker (Hustle & Flow; Dolemite Is My Name) who could absolutely make a Christmas crowd-pleaser like this sing. Doesn’t this sound like a perfect holiday-weekend family-movie compromise? I’d also be willing to bet good money on Globe nominations for one or both of Jackman or Hudson.
➼ Box-office ineligible
Director: Joseph Kosinski
Stars: Brad Pitt, many cars
Release date: Already released
After premiering at the end of June, Kosinski’s follow-up to Top Gun: Maverick has been a bit slept on for just how big a blockbuster it was (a quiet $600 million worldwide). You won’t be able to reap any points for those dollars, hence the bargain price. But this movie will certainly contend for at least some of the technical Oscars come year end.
Director: Kate Winslet
Stars: Kate Winslet, Toni Collette, Andrea Riseborough
Release date: December 12
Oscar winner Kate Winslet makes her directorial debut with this story of four adult siblings who have to rally around their ailing mother at Christmastime. A star as big as Winslet having her first go at directing a movie is always going to be a big deal, and Netflix releasing this at Christmastime (it hits the platform on Christmas Eve) indicates that it thinks it will be a crowd-pleaser.
Director: Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans
Stars: Arden Cho, Ahn Hyo-seop, May Hong, Ji-young Yoo
Release date: Already released
Netflix’s big success story of this year so far has been how well it’s done to ride the wave of KPop Demon Hunters. The songs are hits, the sing-along version of the movie was No. 1 at the box office, and it’s probably going to be a major contender for the Oscars for Best Song and Best Animated Feature.
Director: Mary Bronstein
Stars: Rose Byrne, Conan O’Brien, Danielle Macdonald
Film festivals: Sundance, Berlin, Toronto, New York
Release date: October 10
Byrne won the lead acting prize at the Berlin International Film Festival earlier this year, which if nothing else is an indicator of just how impactful her performance is as a mother well past the end of her rope. There’s a pretty wide range of outcomes for this one, but look to the indie awards to give this movie some early points.
Director: Richard Linklater
Stars: Ethan Hawke, Andrew Scott, Margaret Qualley
Film festivals: Berlin, Toronto, New York
Release date: October 17
Ethan Hawke reteams with Linklater for this biopic of famed songwriter Lorenz Hart, who faces one long night of reckoning after the opening of his ex-professional-partner’s musical Oklahoma! Andrew Scott’s performance as Richard Rodgers won a prize at Berlin, and you have to figure one of these years, Scott is going to break through with an Oscar nomination.
Director: Lynne Ramsay
Stars: Jennifer Lawrence, Robert Pattinson
Film festivals: Cannes
Release date: November 7
Lynne Ramsay has been a critics’ darling her whole career, but that’s never translated into mainstream appreciation. But she’s never worked with Jennifer Lawrence before, either. The film’s Cannes reception was a bit inscrutable, but Lawrence playing a young mother battling psychosis is a tempting bit of awards bait.
Director: Edgar Wright
Stars: Glen Powell, Josh Brolin
Release date: November 7
An adaptation of the Stephen King novel and a remake of the Arnold Schwarzenegger film, The Running Man looks to be a great showcase for Glen Powell’s ever-blossoming star power, as well as a get-right opportunity for Edgar Wright after Last Night in Soho disappointed.
Director: James L. Brooks
Stars: Emma Mackey, Jamie Lee Curtis
Release date: December 12
The legendary James L. Brooks hasn’t directed a movie since 2010’s disappointing How Do You Know. Fifteen years later, Brooks is back with a story about a young idealist trying to balance a professional life in politics with her wacky family. Whether Brooks can recapture the magic of Broadcast News and Terms of Endearment is one of this fall’s big questions.
Popcorn emoji (🍿) denotes a film that is eligible for box-office points based on its release date.
Anaconda $5 🍿
Him $5 🍿
Gabby’s Dollhouse: The Movie $5 🍿
Now You See Me: Now You Don’t $5 🍿
The Housemaid $5 🍿
Zero A.D. $5 🍿
Dust Bunny $3 🍿
Regretting You $3 🍿
Sisu 2 $3 🍿
Soul on Fire $3 🍿
Eternity $2 🍿
Good Fortune $2 🍿
Trap House $2 🍿
Black Phone 2 $5 🍿
Keeper $5 🍿
The Strangers — Chapter 2 $5 🍿
Bone Lake $2 🍿
Shelby Oaks $2 🍿
Silent Night, Deadly Night $1 🍿
Anemone $5 🍿
A Private Life $5 🍿
Eleanor the Great $5 🍿
Father, Mother, Sister, Brother $5 🍿
Hedda $5 🍿
No Other Choice $5 🍿
Peter Hujar’s Day $5 🍿
The Lost Bus $5
The Mastermind $5 🍿
The Secret Agent $5 🍿
The Testament of Ann Lee $5 🍿
Christy $5 🍿
A Big Bold Beautiful Journey $5
Black Bag $5
Eddington $5
Highest 2 Lowest $5
Materialists $5
Nouvelle Vague $5 🍿
Pillion $5 🍿
The History of Sound $5
The Life of Chuck $5
Caught Stealing $3
Friendship $3
Misericordia $3
Sorry, Baby $3
Steve $3 🍿
Dead Man’s Wire $3 🍿
Cloud $2
Eephus $2
Pavements $2
Splitsville $2
On Swift Horses $1
Preparation for the Next Life $1
Sacramento $1
The Friend $1
Captain America: Brave New World $3
The Monkey $3
Honey Don’t! $3
One of Them Days $2
The Naked Gun $3
The Phoenician Scheme $3
Weapons $3
Drop $2
Presence $2
The Old Guard 2 $2
28 Years Later $5
A Minecraft Movie $5
How to Train Your Dragon $5
Lilo & Stitch $5
Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning $5
Superman $5
Mickey 17 $3
Warfare $3
Thunderbolts $3
The Fantastic Four: First Steps $3
Jurassic World Rebirth $3
The Long Walk $3
100 Nights of Hero $2 🍿
Predators $5
Come See Me in the Good Light $3 🍿
Cover-Up $2 🍿
Sally $3
2000 Meters to Andriivka $2
Diane Warren: Relentless $2
Prime Minister $2
Selena Y Los Dinos $2 🍿
The Alabama Solution $2 🍿
The Perfect Neighbor $2 🍿
Apocalypse in the Tropics $1
Deaf President Now! $1
Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore $1
Orwell: 2 + 2 = 5 $1 🍿
The Voice of Hind Rajab $1 🍿
Zodiac Killer Project $1 🍿
Architecton $1
Elio $5
The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants $5 🍿
Arco $3 🍿
Ne Zha II $3
Scarlet $3 🍿
A Magnificent Life $2 🍿
Dog Man $2
In Your Dreams $2 🍿
Smurfs $2
The Bad Guys 2 $2
The Twits $2 🍿
Pets on a Train $1 🍿
Caught by the Tides $3
Sound of Falling $3 🍿
Sirāt $3 🍿
Parthenope $2
On Becoming a Guinea Fowl $2
The President’s Cake $2 🍿
Left-Handed Girl $2 🍿
Couture $2 🍿
In the Hand of Dante $2 🍿
Last Days $2 🍿
Late Fame $2 🍿
Rebuilding $2 🍿
Atropia $1 🍿
Love Me $1
Lurker $1
Plainclothes $1
Poetic License $1 🍿
Relay $1
Rose of Nevada $1 🍿
Sacrifice $1 🍿
The Captive $1 🍿
The Christophers $1 🍿
The Thing With Feathers $1 🍿
Tuner $1 🍿
Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale $3
Nirvana the Band the Show the Movie $3
The Ballad of Wallis Island $3
The Man With the Bag $3 🍿
The Roses $3
Ballerina $2
Hurry Up Tomorrow $2
Snow White $2
The Accountant 2 $2
The Legend of Ochi $2
The Wedding Banquet $2
Alto Knights $1
Bring Her Back $1
Companion $1
Death of a Unicorn $1
Echo Valley $1
Fountain of Youth $1
Freakier Friday $1
Havoc $1
I Know What You Did Last Summer $1
I Wish You All The Best $1 🍿
Magic Farm $1
M3GAN 2.0 $1
Nobody 2 $1
Novocaine $1
Opus $1
Sarah’s Oil $1 🍿
Spinal Tap II: The End Continues $1
Straw $1
The Assessment $1
The Conjuring: Last Rites $1
The Electric State $1
The Surfer $1
The Thursday Murder Club $1
Wolf Man $1
The Woman in the Yard $1
Oh. What. Fun. $3 🍿
All of You $1 🍿
Swiped $1 🍿
Ruth & Boaz $1 🍿
The Woman in Cabin 10 $1 🍿
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