We’re Dangerously Close to Another #OscarsSoWhite Year. Can Zendaya, Colman Domingo, Pedro Pascal and More Prevent It?

Few people have noticed yet, but the Oscars could be barreling toward repeating some not-so-great history.

In March, Michael B. Jordan walked onto the Dolby Theatre stage and collected the best actor Oscar for “Sinners,” one of four wins for a film that set the all-time record with 16 nominations. He is the sixth Black man in 98 years to win the prize. Now, eight months later, if the pundits are reading the race correctly, the door his win seemed to open could be swinging shut.

In Gold Derby’s aggregated predictions in late October, three actors of color sat in nomination positions across the four acting categories and not one director of color made the projected five. In the lead races, nine of the 10 projected slots belonged to white performers. Mexican Australian breakout Inde Navarrette was the lone exception.

If that holds through nominations morning on Jan. 21, we’ll be reliving January 2015, when all 20 acting nominees were white and April Reign gave the industry the infamous hashtag it still hasn’t shaken: #OscarsSoWhite. It happened again the following year. After each time, the Academy promised it had learned something and was making changes.

But the Academy has never been the whole problem. Follow the data and it starts upstream, in Hollywood’s own hallways.

In August, the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative released “Inequality in 1,900 Popular Films,” its annual study of the 100 top-grossing movies, this time adding 2025 to a data set that dates to 2007.

On its face, the race and ethnicity data look like progress. In 2025, 41.5% of all speaking or named characters came from an underrepresented racial or ethnic group, reaching proportional representation with the U.S. population for just the fourth time in 19 years. Since 2007, the share of white characters has fallen 19.1 percentage points. Still, Asian characters are the only group to post a significant gain, at 11.1 points.

Thirty movies had no Black characters, 46 had no Hispanic or Latino characters and 26 had no Asian characters. Of the 37 leads and co-leads of color the study identifies, only four are Hispanic or Latino. Only four Latino directors worked across the entire sample, and all four were men.

Women haven’t fared much better. Women and girls make up just over half the U.S. population, yet they held only 33.6% of speaking or named roles in 2025, barely up from 29.9% in 2007. Thirty-eight films had a female lead or co-lead, up from 20 in 2007 but down from a 19-year high of 55 in 2024. Only 15 of those 38 films were led by a woman of color.

Behind the camera, nine of the 111 directors were women, down from a record 16 in 2024 and identical to 2008: Nisha Ganatra (“Freakier Friday”), Emma Tammi (“Five Nights at Freddy’s 2″), Domee Shi and Madeline Sharafian (“Elio”), Celine Song (“Materialists”), Jennifer Kaytin Robinson (“I Know What You Did Last Summer”), Maggie Kang (“KPop Demon Hunters”), Hikari (“Rental Family”) and Chloé Zhao (“Hamnet”), the only previous best director winner in the group. Across all 19 years, women account for only 7% of directors.

Here’s what makes this year so maddening. The talent is there. The bench is deep, and it’s full of work that stands up to anything in the predicted fields. What’s missing is the buzz, and the buzz doesn’t build itself.

So let’s talk about who could stop history from repeating.

Start with Zendaya. The 30-year-old is one of the most famous actors on the planet, and she still has zero Oscar nominations. Few actors ever have a year like the one she’s having. She opened 2026 with A24’s “The Drama,” then turned up in two of the year’s biggest hits, “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” and “The Odyssey.” Now Warner Bros. is moving her to best actress for Chani in “Dune: Part Three,” opening Dec. 18, after positioning her as supporting in the first two films.

The two-time Emmy winner for “Euphoria” doesn’t need an introduction. She needs a campaign that treats this as her year and treats Chani as the heart of the film, not the third chapter of someone else’s story. I’ve come around to believing this could be the season she lands her first nomination.

Who would object to Zendaya being nominated or even winning? No one I can think of. And at this time last year, how many of us thought Michael B. Jordan could go the distance? Not many.

Then there are the men sitting on the bubble. At 56, Afro-Latino actor Colman Domingo is the engine of “Michael,” the film critics savaged and audiences turned into the first biopic to cross $1 billion worldwide. His Joe Jackson sits squarely on the bubble in supporting actor. Domingo has already made history as the first Afro-Latino nominated for best actor, for “Rustin,” then went back-to-back with “Sing Sing.” A third nomination, and his first in supporting, would make him one of the defining presences of this decade. Last month, he picked up the Vantage Award at the Academy Museum Gala. Remember, voters were in that room.

His co-star Jaafar Jackson had never acted professionally before stepping into his uncle’s shoes. He hovers in most pundits’ top 10, but the Golden Globes recently rejected Lionsgate’s bid to run “Michael” as a comedy or musical, pushing him into a crowded drama field. Rami Malek and Austin Butler both rode music biopics to best actor nominations, and Malek won. The road exists. Lionsgate just has to pave it.

Two-time Oscar winner Mahershala Ali has spent the year fielding questions about the “Blade” movie that isn’t coming. Meanwhile, Bassam Tariq’s “Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother” for Amazon MGM gives him a stunning lead turn as a father of three by day and a sword-wielding assassin by night. The film premiered at TIFF, and co-star John Cho just received the Luminary Award at the SCAD Savannah Film Festival for his work in it. Neither name shows up much on prediction charts. That should change.

Cho is also a reminder of how hard it has been for Asian performers to break into the acting races this season.

Gemma Chan spent years shepherding Beth de Araújo’s “Josephine” as a producer, and the film won both the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award at Sundance. Sumerian is running her in supporting actress for her shattering turn as a mother whose daughter witnesses a sexual assault, and she has never been better. Mason Reeves, the film’s young star, whose mother is of Chinese descent and whose father is half Costa Rican, is being pushed in lead and is every bit as compelling.

Jeon Do-yeon is the only Asian lead performer appearing consistently in the predictions. In “Possible Love,” Netflix’s Venice Grand Jury Prize winner and South Korea’s official submission, she reunites with Lee Chang-dong, who directed her to the best actress prize at Cannes for “Secret Sunshine” in 2007. No Korean national has ever been nominated in a lead acting category, and Youn Yuh-jung, a supporting actress winner for “Minari,” remains the only Korean actor to win.

Tao Okamoto became the first Japanese actor to win best actress at Cannes, sharing the prize with Virginie Efira for Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s “All of a Sudden.” Neon opens the film Nov. 25 as Japan’s submission.

Riz Ahmed, the first Muslim nominated for best actor, for “Sound of Metal,” is the most assured presence in Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s black comedy “Digger” and the name reviewers keep singling out. But the film’s mixed reviews have dragged everyone down, Tom Cruise included.

For Black women, the picture is just as bleak.

Rosalind Eleazar’s first leading film role, as a stalled actor fighting for a second act in Chris Rock’s drama “Misty Green,” was one of the most talked-about performances at TIFF. A24 opened the film Oct. 9, and the buzz has all but evaporated. The irony of a movie about an actor who can’t get the industry to look her way doesn’t escape me.

Sophie Okonedo, nominated for “Hotel Rwanda,” has two shots on goal. She plays a grieving mother in Kelly O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson’s “Mouse,” which will campaign her in supporting actress and takes the title role in Arie and Chuko Esiri’s “Clarissa,” a Lagos-set reimagining of “Mrs. Dalloway” that puts her in the best actress race. She’s extraordinary in both, but two great performances in one season can split a campaign’s attention as easily as they double it.

The Latino bench is deeper than the charts suggest.

Inde Navarrette is our community’s best shot in lead. The daughter of a Mexican father and an Australian mother, she turned Curry Barker’s “Obsession” into a horror phenomenon that grossed nearly $500 million worldwide and Focus is running her in best actress. Horror has always had a hard time with the Academy, but after Jordan and Amy Madigan (“Weapons”) both won in March, that wall has never been lower.

John Leguizamo, as the loyal swineherd Eumaeus in Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey,” sits more comfortably in the conversation than any other Latino man. Born in Colombia and raised in Queens, he has been grinding for four decades without a nomination. If the season’s steadiest Latino contender starts to slide, or voters opt for someone like his co-star Robert Pattinson instead, the alarms will only get louder.

Chilean-born Pedro Pascal gives one of my favorite performances of the year. The best of his career, in Tony Gilroy’s “Behemoth!,” which Searchlight opens Dec. 4. He looks solid for a Golden Globe nomination in drama. Still, the Oscar consensus hasn’t made room for him yet and a December opening leaves very little runway.

James Ortiz may have delivered the most beloved supporting performance of the year, and you never see his face. He voiced and puppeteered Rocky in “Project Hail Mary,” and Amazon MGM has formally submitted him for supporting actor. Voters fell for the character. The question is whether they’ll credit the man underneath it.

Mariana Di Girolamo, the Chilean actor who broke out in Pablo Larraín’s “Ema,” grounds Martin McDonagh’s “Wild Horse Nine” as a leftist student in 1973 Chile. Searchlight opened the film Nov. 6, and her name has since drifted off most charts. Monica Barbaro, whose mother is of Mexican and Nicaraguan descent and who was nominated two ceremonies ago for “A Complete Unknown,” plays former OpenAI executive Mira Murati in Luca Guadagnino’s “Artificial” and deserves to be in the conversation, too.

Navarrette, Leguizamo and Ortiz were all honored at the Critics Choice Celebración de Cinema & Television in October. (Full disclosure: I co-program and host the event.)

If the acting races are thin, the director’s chair is nearly empty. And the candidates are real. Phil Lord, raised in Miami by a Cuban-born mother, co-directed “Project Hail Mary,” one of the year’s biggest hits, with Chris Miller. Lee Chang-dong returned after eight years with “Possible Love,” which Netflix is campaigning for best picture. Nigerian twin filmmakers Arie and Chuko Esiri are behind “Clarissa.” And Iñárritu, a two-time best director winner, has “Digger,” though the reviews have been rough.

In 2015, the year the hashtag was born, Iñárritu won best director for “Birdman” as the only filmmaker of color in the category, the same year Ava DuVernay was shut out for “Selma.” Eleven years later, he can’t count on being the exception.

Women directors are hitting their own wall, and the Annenberg numbers show why. Olivia Wilde’s “The Invite” is A24’s strongest awards play, and she could become the first woman to direct herself to an acting nomination. De Araújo has the Sundance double with “Josephine.” Sign Heder opened TIFF with “Being Heumann” for Apple, four years after “CODA” won best picture without her name in the directing lineup.

So what happens now?

The Academy has more than 11,000 members and a quarter of them live outside the U.S., making it the most global voting body in the organization’s history. That’s the good news. It’s also a trap. A more diverse membership can’t nominate films it hasn’t seen, and too many of these titles are arriving late, running lean campaigns or slipping out of the screener pile altogether.

Nominations morning is 10 weeks away. Distributors holding these performances need to spend as they believe in them. Critics groups, whose year-end announcements shape the season, need to look past the obvious.

And voters need to press play.

This week’s updated predictions are below.

(In alphabetical order. Ranked choices are on each individual category page.)

Best Picture
“Artificial” (Neon)
“The Debut” (A24)
“Dune: Part Three” (Warner Bros.)
“Elsinore” (Focus Features)
“The Invite” (A24)
“La Bola Negra” (Netflix)
“The Odyssey” (Universal Pictures) ***
“Project Hail Mary” (Amazon MGM Studios)
“Wild Horse Nine” (Searchlight Pictures)
“You Can See Everything” (A24)

Director
Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo, “La Bola Negra” (Netflix)
Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, “Project Hail Mary” (Amazon MGM Studios)
Martin McDonagh, “Wild Horse Nine” (Searchlight Pictures)
Christopher Nolan, “The Odyssey” (Universal Pictures)
Denis Villeneuve, “Dune: Part Three” (Warner Bros.) ***

Actor
Matt Damon, “The Odyssey” (Universal Pictures)
John Malkovich, “Wild Horse Nine” (Searchlight Pictures)
Pedro Pascal, “Behemoth!” (Searchlight Pictures)
Andrew Scott, “Elsinore” (Focus Features) ***
John Turturro, “The Only Living Pickpocket in New York” (Sony Pictures Classics)

Actress
Sandra Hüller, “Rose” (Mubi)
Julianne Moore, “The Debut” (A24) ***
Inde Navarrette, “Obsession” (Focus Features)
Olivia Wilde, “The Invite” (A24)
Zendaya, “The Drama” (A24)

Supporting Actor
Andrew Garfield, “Artificial” (Neon) ***
Paul Giamatti, “The Debut” (A24)
Guitarricadelafuente, “La Bola Negra” (Netflix)
John Leguizamo, “The Odyssey” (Universal Pictures)
Sam Rockwell, “Wild Horse Nine” (Searchlight Pictures)

Supporting Actress
Penélope Cruz, “The Invite” (A24)
Anne Hathaway, “The Odyssey” (Universal Pictures) ***
Samantha Morton, “The Odyssey” (Universal Pictures)
Kate O’Flynn, “Tender Loving Care” (Bleecker Street)
Amanda Seyfried, “You Can See Everything” (A24)

Original Screenplay
“Artificial” (Neon) — Simon Rich
“The Debut” (A24) — Jesse Eisenberg
“Elsinore” (Focus Features) — Stephen Beresford
“Tender Loving Care” (Bleecker Street) — Mike Leigh
“Wild Horse Nine” (Searchlight Pictures) — Martin McDonagh ***

Adapted Screenplay
“Dune: Part Three” (Warner Bros.) — Brian K. Vaughan, Denis Villeneuve
“The Invite” (A24) — Rashida Jones and Will McCormack ***
“La Bola Negra” (Netflix) — Javier Ambrossi, Javier Calvo, Alberto Conejero
“The Odyssey” (Universal Pictures) — Christopher Nolan
“Project Hail Mary” (Amazon MGM Studios) — Drew Goddard

Casting
“Dune: Part Three” (Warner Bros.) — Francine Maisler
“Elsinore” (Focus Features) — Jessica Ronane
“La Bola Negra” (Netflix) — Eva Leira and Yolanda Serrano
“The Odyssey” (Universal Pictures) — John Papsidera ***
“Wild Horse Nine” (Searchlight Pictures) — Sarah Finn

Animated Feature
“Iron Boy” (Sony Pictures Classics) — Louis Clichy, Nicolas de Rosanbo, Fabrice Delville
“Ray Gunn” (Netflix) — Brad Bird and Lisa Beroud (p.g.a.)
“Tangles” (Independent Film Company) — Leah Nelson, Jay Grandin, Jennifer W. Ray, Lauren Miller Rogen and Seth Rogen
“Toy Story 5” (Pixar) — Andrew Stanton, Lindsey Collins and Jessica Choi
“Wildwood” (Laika) — Travis Knight and Sam Wilson ***

Production Design
“Dune: Part Three” (Warner Bros.) ***
“La Bola Negra” (Netflix)
“The Odyssey” (Universal Pictures)
“Project Hail Mary” (Amazon MGM Studios)
“Werwulf” (Focus Features)

Cinematography
“Dune: Part Three” (Warner Bros.)
“La Bola Negra” (Netflix)
“The Odyssey” (Universal Pictures) ***
“Project Hail Mary” (Amazon MGM Studios)
“Werwulf” (Focus Features)

Costume Design
“Dune: Part Three” (Warner Bros.) ***
“La Bola Negra” (Netflix)
“The Odyssey” (Universal Pictures)
“Sense and Sensibility” (Focus Features)
“Wuthering Heights” (Warner Bros.)

Film Editing
“Dune: Part Three” (Warner Bros.)
“The Invite” (A24)
“The Odyssey” (Universal Pictures) ***
“Wild Horse Nine” (Searchlight Pictures)
“You Can See Everything” (A24)

Makeup and Hairstyling
“Dune: Part Three” (Warner Bros.) ***
“Ebenezer: A Christmas Carol” (Paramount Pictures)
“Michael” (Lionsgate)
“The Odyssey” (Universal Pictures)
“Wicker” (Black Bear Pictures)

Sound
“Behemoth!” (Searchlight Pictures)
“Dune: Part Three” (Warner Bros.)
“The Odyssey” (Universal Pictures) ***
“Project Hail Mary” (Amazon MGM Studios)
“Werwulf” (Focus Features)

Visual Effects
“Avengers: Doomsday” (Marvel Studios)
“Dune: Part Three” (Warner Bros.) ***
“Project Hail Mary” (Amazon MGM Studios)
“Whalefall” (20th Century Studios)
“Wildwood” (Laika)

Original Score
“Disclosure Day” (Universal Pictures) — John Williams
“Dune: Part Three” (Warner Bros.) — Hans Zimmer
“La Bola Negra” (Netflix) — Raül Refree
“The Odyssey” (Universal Pictures) — Ludwig Göransson
“Project Hail Mary” (Amazon MGM Studios) — Daniel Pemberton ***

Original Song
“This City May Have Chewed Me Up (But It Hasn’t Spit Me Out)” from “The Debut” (A24) ***
“La Nieve” from “La Bola Negra” (Netflix)
“One Right Here” from “Maserati: The Brothers” (Self-Distributed)
“Let Me Sell You a Dream” from “Musk” (Bleecker Street)
“I Knew It, I Knew You” from “Toy Story 5” (Pixar)

Documentary Feature
“American Doctor” (Watermelon Pictures)
“Naza” (The Guardian, MK2 and Neon)
“Once Upon a Time in Harlem” (Neon) ***
“One in a Million” (Frontline)
“Rehearsals for a Revolution” (Sony Pictures Classics)

International Feature
“Fjord” from Romania (Neon)
“La Bola Negra” from Spain (Netflix) ***
“Minotaur” from France (Mubi)
“Possible Love” from South Korea (Netflix)
“Rose” from Austria (Mubi)