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It’s been a little over a week since the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences crowned Spotlight Best Picture and finally gave Leonardo DiCaprio an Oscar for being mauled by a CGI bear, but who cares about this year’s Oscar race anymore? We’re moving on to next year!

Meghan O’Keefe: Okay, Joe, what movie is going to win the Best Picture Oscar next year? The Oscar Grouch NEEDS to know!

Joe Reid: That’s a lot of question right off the bat! I need time to compose myself and work through my progressions. As a self-styled Oscar … I was going to say “expert” but that’s a bit of a stretch for someone who went 13/24 on his predictions this year. But as an Oscar person, there are a few criteria I check this far out to give me some early indications of Oscar success. One of which is release date. In 2015, Spotlight opened in early November; The Revenant and The Big Short opened in late December. Brooklyn? Late November. Room? Mid-October. There will always be movies from every corner of the release calendar that are Oscar-worthy, but the truth remains that a Mad Max-style summer opening is still the outlier when it comes to the movies that studios will push for Oscar success.

So if we’re talking release date, we’re talking:

Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk (Ang Lee movie about Iraq War soldiers)
The Founder (Michael Keaton as the founder of McDonald’s, from the director of The Blind Side)
Lion (a Harvey Weinstein-backed film about an Indian boy adopted by Australians who seeks out his birth family)
Passengers (a sci-fi romance starring Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt, from the director of The Imitation Game)

To me, none of those seem like total slam dunks, for various reasons. And there are certainly still Oscar hopefuls that haven’t announced release dates yet. Before we start narrowing down, what else have you got?

MO: Well, besides the fact that I’m very excited to see what Ang Lee can wring out of Vin Diesel in Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, I’m curious to see what a couple of buzzworthy rising stars are going to bring to the table. Nate Parker’s The Birth of a Nation stormed through Sundance like a hurricane. Amazon is backing something called Manchester By The Sea. It’s directed by Kenneth Lonergan and reportedly features a game-changing performance from Casey Affleck. Finally, even though she just won her first Oscar, Alicia Vikander is going to have another big year. Harvey Weinstein might have pushed back Tulip Fever for reshoots, but it’s definitely an acting category contender for the Swede; and The Light Between Oceans could also get her back in the conversation. Based on the trailer alone, the latter could be the tearjerker that propels Derek Cianfrance into the mainstream and it could get Michael Fassbender his first Oscar.
And then there’s La-La Land. Joe, can an original musical set in Los Angeles called La-La Land really be a serious awards contender?

JR: Well, see, one of the traps that Oscar pundits (ugh, that term) fall into is thinking that just because something seems Oscar-y, it must be in. If you look at the last, say, 10 years of Best Picture nominees, there’s a lot that looks like awards bait, but you’ll find that most films need something that set them apart and make them different. If Damian Chazelle (director of the Best Picture nominee Whiplash) can pull off La-La Land (and it’s not like Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling don’t have the chops), it will have no problem setting itself apart from the pack. Whereas something like The Light Between Oceans will have to excel in other areas. [UPDATE: Literally as we were writing this, Lionsgate was busy moving La-La Land to a primo December 2nd opening weekend. Perhaps a sign of good faith in its awards chances?]

One tried and true way to stand out to Oscar voters is to be a movie about a real person. It’s a hook that works again and again. This year, we’ve got Tom Hanks in a Clint Eastwood movie about the pilot who landed a plane in the Hudson (Sully); we’ve got Joseph Gordon-Levitt playing Edward Snowden for Oliver Stone (Snowden); we’ve got a Tupac biopic (All Eyez on Me) that’s likely looking to make the same kind of money that Straight Outta Compton did, only it’s opening in November, which may be a sign of a better Oscar campaign in the works. Also Meryl Streep is playing the alleged worst singer of all time in Florence Foster Jenkins, and if she doesn’t at least score a Golden Globe nomination, I’ll eat my hat. Any other real-life stories you’ve got your eye on?

MO: Natalie Portman is playing Jackie Onassis in the aptly-named Jackie, and while I personally find her a bit precious and overrated as an actress, there’s no doubt that she can deliver the goods when she wants to. The problem she’ll face is that it has to be a good film. Naomi Watts probably thought she was a shoo-in for playing Princess Diana and Nicole Kidman was supposed to snag all the awards in Grace of Monaco, but as you were saying, it’s not enough for a film to be “Oscar bait” anymore. A film also has to subvert and overcome its own hype to give the viewer something unexpected in the theater.

Speaking of unexpected: Can we talk about Martin Scorsese’s Portuguese monks in Japan movie, Silence? It’s got Liam Neeson, Adam Driver, and Andrew Garfield in it.

JR: I’m really looking forward to it! And I say that as someone who hasn’t really loved a Scorsese movie since … The Aviator? But it will be nice to see him working with actors who aren’t Leonardo DiCaprio for a change. And the culture shock of the setting could lead to some really unexpected results. It’ll be interesting, because Scorsese is one of the few A-list directors who are even approaching awards-y movies this year. Steven Spielberg is making The BFG, a summer family blockbuster; Ron Howard is making another Da Vinci Code movie; David Fincher is making Mindhunter for Netflix.

Here’s one Oscar-winning director who I would actually not count out: Mel Gibson. He’s directing a movie called Hacksaw Ridge, starring Andrew Garfield and Teresa Palmer, about a World War II conscientious objector. Most hated man in Hollywood? Maybe. But you know how hard it is for Hollywood to resist a comeback story. And for a WWII movie? They might just vote for it unconsciously.

But with a lot of these major directors out of the running, this year could be the moment for someone new. Which maybe means Nate Parker actually can capitalize on that Sundance buzz for The Birth of a Nation. Or Jeff Nichols, who’s been on the fringes of the big-time for a while and who has two movies scheduled for this year: Midnight Special (which really wants to be the Ex Machina of 2016) and Loving, about an interracial marriage in Virginia in the ‘50s. Any new faces you’ve got your eye on?

MO: I’m crossing my fingers that Amma Asante breaks through this year with A United Kingdom. I adored her last film, Belle, and think that there could be some cool juice in her new project. It’s another historical bi-racial romance, but this time her stars — David Oyelowo and Rosamund Pike — are already established players in the Oscar game. I’m also curious to see if this will finally be the year the Academy gives Oscar Isaac a nomination. I’m still mad he didn’t get one for both Inside Llewyn Davis and A Most Violent Year.

JR: He’s in a movie with Oscar-magnet Christian Bale called The Promise, directed by Hotel Rwanda’s Terry George. Keep an eye on that.

So given all of this information, you think you’re ready to make some blind predictions? Five movies you think will be Best Picture nominees? I’ve got mine:

The Birth of a Nation (I’m not sure it’ll win, but I think that Sundance momentum shows that this is a movie Hollywood may feel they NEED to recognize)
Lion (Harvey Weinstein is already advocating for this one)
Hacksaw Ridge (I feel the chill of a Mel Gibson comeback in the air)
A United Kingdom (I’m all in on Amma Asante)
Silence (Scorsese hasn’t missed much lately)

MO: I’m inclined to agree with a few of your choices — but I’ll add a few more into the mix:

The Birth of a Nation
Silence
Manchester By The Sea (Marking the first streaming service to get a feature nominated)
La-La Land (I have a weird feeling this will surprise people and thanks to Hamilton, audiences are amped for original musicals for the first time in decades)
The Promise (Based on Bale’s presence alone)

Let’s check back in the Fall and see how wrong we are?