Who will finally win the Barbenheimer showdown at the Oscars?

Roughly $2.4 billion in combined worldwide ticket sales? Universal critical acclaim? Twenty-one Oscar nominations between them? It might seem like everyone's a winner when it comes to lifting up Barbie and Oppenheimer as shining examples of Hollywood excellence, and yet the "Barbenheimer" narrative that swept the summer of 2023 continues as the high-profile blockbusters prepare to square off at the 96th Academy Awards.

So, will the 2024 Oscars ceremony finally put to rest the long-standing (and good-spirited) war between Greta Gerwig's tentpole and Christopher Nolan's historical epic? In one context, it should, as Oppenheimer — Nolan's three-hour drama about the titular father of the atomic bomb that ended World War II — is the clear-cut frontrunner to win Best Picture.

With 13 overall nominations (the most at a single ceremony since La La Land notched 14 nods in 2017), Oppenheimer has clear, cross-branch support from all sects of the movie industry — compared to Barbie's haul of eight total nods. While Barbie showed up in Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor (Ryan Gosling), Best Supporting Actress (America Ferrera), and Best Adapted Screenplay, Gerwig was shockingly omitted from the Best Director lineup — a category Nolan was nominated in and is poised to win.

As Barbie suffers on that key front, its Oscars chances significantly dwindle. Only two movies in the last 30 years have won Best Picture without a Best Director nomination: Ben Affleck's Argo in 2013 and Peter Farrelly's Green Book in 2019.

Since Oppenheimer is generating heat for multiple victories in other key categories (Robert Downey Jr. is the likely Supporting Actor winner, while Cillian Murphy is still alive in the Best Actor race, though far from a sure thing), it probably will notch higher on the voters' preferential ballots across every branch of the Academy.

Further fueling speculation that Barbie was never as strong of an Oscar contender as many speculated, Margot Robbie, the face of the film who gave a soaring performance in the titular role — and who also received a nod for producing the movie — missed out on a Best Actress nomination, despite showing up at virtually every precursor awards ceremony on the circuit.

Some Oppenheimer skeptics might say that the film has, thus far, only won hardware from groups that don't share crossover membership with the Academy (Golden Globes, Critics Choice), and they'd be right — but the film is the most consistent presence on the awards trail so far, later dominating nominations announcements from the industry-inclusive SAG Awards, BAFTA Awards, Producers Guild of America Awards, and the Directors Guild of America Awards.

In the end, does it really matter who wins the Barbenheimer showdown of 2023? For studio prestige, both Universal and Warner Bros. have huge victories under their belts: In the age of the dying box office draw, Robbie flexed her might at ticket booths around the world, and Oppenheimer proved that a director's name can sell a project perhaps more than any actor working today. Shades of pink and black dividing the two will meld to gold at the Academy Awards on March 10, with both films winning by mere virtue of existing as pillars of success, side by side, just like those adorable Barbenheimer houses on the beach in Santa Monica.

Check out more from EW's The Awardist, featuring exclusive interviews, analysis, and our podcast diving into all the highlights from the year's best in TV.

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