Conan O’Brien launched the 98th Academy Awards with a “Sabotage”-scored sprint through the nominees, dressed as Amy Madigan’s character in “Weapons,” and a plea for what he called “that rarest of qualities today: optimism.”O’Brien, hosting for the second time, alluded to “chaotic and frightening times” in his opening monologue at the Dolby Theatre. But he argued that the current geopolitical climate made the Oscars all the more resonate as a globally unifying force. Autumn Durald Arkapaw, ‘Sinners,’ wins best cinematographyArkapaw becomes first woman and Black person to win the award.“I really want all the women in this room to stand up, because I feel like I don’t get here without you guys.”The crowd began applauding as the women in the audience got on their feet.Andy Jurgensen, ‘One Battle After Another,’ wins best film editing“I would like to dedicate this to my aunt, Barbara Hall, who was film archivist for the Academy for over 25 years, showing me old movies and teaching me about film history,” Jurgensen said.‘F1’ gets best sound winThe prize recognized the work of Gareth John, Al Nelson, Gwendolyn Yates Whittle, Gary A. Rizzo and Juan Peralta in the movie.Ludwig Göransson, ‘Sinners,’ wins best scoreBlues changed the life of Göransson’s family.“My dad bought his first blues album in Sweden, 1964,” Göransson said.“Even though it was on the other side of the world from a place my dad had never been, and a place he could not relate to, the music was so powerful it changed my dad’s life.”‘Mr. Nobody Against Putin’ wins best documentary feature“’Mr Nobody Against Putin’ is about how you lose your country. And what we saw when working with this footage is that you lose it through countless small, little acts of complicity,” filmmaker David Borenstein said.“We all face a moral choice, but luckily, even a nobody is more powerful than you think,” he said.‘All the Empty Rooms’ wins best documentary shortIn this short directed by Joshua Seftel and produced by Conall Jones, journalist Steve Hartman and photographer Lou Bopp document the empty bedrooms of children killed in school shootings over the course of seven years.Gloria Cazares, whose child was killed in the Uvalde school shooting, accepted the award.“My daughter, Jackie, was nine years old when she was killed in Uvalde. Since that day, her bedroom has been frozen in time,” she said.Jimmy Kimmel is back (again)Jimmy Kimmel’s return to the Oscars stage (“Wait, am I not hosting?”) and ABC telecast where he served as host four times still can’t possibly be as dramatic as the year he just had.ABC and parent company Disney yanked his late-night show “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” off the air in September for remarks he made following the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.Kimmel’s indefinite suspension was celebrated by President Donald Trump. But it wouldn’t even be a week before he returned to the air with much stronger ratings than before.His jokes at Trump’s expense prompted the president to post that ABC needed to “get the bum off the air.”But Kimmel instead got a contract extension in December.’Avatar: Fire and Ash’ gets win for best visual effectsThe award recognizes the work of Joe Letteri, Richard Baneham, Eric Saindon and Daniel Barrett.‘Frankenstein,’ picks up another winTamara Deverell and Shane Vieau won best production design for the film.‘An intellectual cowboy who blazed his own trail’Barbra Streisand’s tribute to Robert Redford highlighted the late actor-director’s history of defending press freedoms, protecting the environment and encouraging new voices in film.“Bob had real backbone on and off the screen,” she said.Babs, as Redford used to call her, sang “The Way We Were” at the end of her tribute.“I miss him now more than ever, even though he loved teasing me,” she said, explaining how she got the nickname.Rachel McAdams paid tribute to women — and Diane Keaton, in particular“Believe me when I say there is an actress of my generation who was not inspired by and enthralled with her absolute singularity,” she said.McAdams told the audience a Girl Scout song Keaton used to sing set on film sets:”Make new friends, but keep the old. One is silver, the other is gold. A circle is round, it has no end. That’s how long, I will be your friend.”Reiner’s actors join Billy Crystal onstage in tributeBilly Crystal opened the in memoriam segment honoring his best friend, Rob Reiner.He ticked off a list of Reiner’s films, including “When Harry Met Sally,” starring Crystal and Meg Ryan, “Stand By Me,” “Say Anything” and “This is Spinal Tap,” among many others.A photo of Reiner and his wife, Michelle Singer Reiner, appeared behind Crystal.The Reiners were found dead in their Los Angeles home in December. Their son, Nick Reiner, has been charged in the deaths of his parents and has pleaded not guilty.Having a slew of actors with longstanding ties to Reiner — Meg Ryan, Kiefer Sutherland, Fred Savage, Demi Moore, John Cusack, Ione Skye and many others — come on stage for the tribute was reminiscent of how the Academy did the same for director John Hughes at the Oscars 16 years ago.Ryan Coogler, ‘Sinners,’ wins best original screenplayFor his first original film, not adapted from any source material, Coogler won the original screenplay Oscar — his very first. He’s also up for more awards tonight.Before accepting his award for original screenplay, Coogler embraced his wife, Zinzi Coogler, who is a producer and worked with him on “Sinners.” He then went down the line with his cast, hugging Jack O’Connell, Wunmi Mosaku, Delroy Lindo and, lastly, his frequent collaborator and friend, Michael B. Jordan.During his speech, he asked the “Sinners” cast and crew to stand up. “You’re all winners in my book,” he said.Paul Thomas Anderson, ‘One Battle After Another,’ wins best adapted screenplayIn adapting Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel about a subculture of aging rebels, “Vineland,” Anderson reworked everything from the timeline to the characters’ names to more details than can be listed in brief.But he does capture the humor, the cynicism and the sweep of Pynchon, the sense of a ragged community of outsiders caught up by forces far beyond even its own paranoid assumptions.“I wrote this movie for my kids to say sorry for the housekeeping mess that we left in this world we’re handing off to them,” Anderson said.Sean Penn, best supporting actor winner, has skipped the Oscars, againHe won as supporting actor for “One Battle After Another.”“Sean Penn couldn’t be here this evening,” presenter Kieran Culkin said. “Or didn’t want to, so I’ll be accepting the award on his behalf.”Penn did little campaigning this awards season, and also stayed away from the Actor Awards and BAFTA Awards, where he won trophies.It’s not the first time Penn has no-showed at the Oscars.The 65-year-old actor has never appeared too attached to Hollywood hardware, whether he wins or loses. He previously gave one of his Oscars to Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskyy.Paul Thomas Anderson and Ryan Coogler win first Oscars“I’m incredibly honored to be part of this history,” said Anderson, who loosely adapted Thomas Pynchon’s “Vineland.” “I wrote this movie for my kids to say sorry for the housekeeping mess but hopefully they will be the generation that brings some common sense and decency.”The film also won best supporting actor for Penn, and the Oscars first award for best casting, for Cassandra Kulukundis.Immediately after Anderson’s first Oscar, Ryan Coogler notched his first Academy Award, too. Coogler, the writer-director of “Sinners” won best original screenplay, and earned his own standing ovation.An Oscars tie is rare, but not a firstThe live action short category resulted in a tie (“Two People Exchanging Saliva” and “The Singers” each got statuettes) this year. But this is not the first time this has happened at the Oscars.The most recent tie came during the 2013 Oscars honoring films from 2012, when “Zero Dark Thirty” and “Skyfall” tied for the sound editing category. There have been five other ties in Oscars history, making Sunday’s tie the seventh.The first tie, which was at the 5th Academy Awards almost 100 years ago, was based on an old rule. Wallace Beery (“The Champ”) and Fredric March (“Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”) tied for best actor. They came within exactly one vote of each other, and in accordance with Academy rules at the time, they shared the recognition. That rule has since changed and only an exact match in totals would qualify as a tie today, according to the Academy.2 live action shorts tie for the win in that category“Thank you to the Academy for supporting a movie that is weird, that is queer, and made by a majority of women!” said Natalie Musteata of “Two People Exchanging Saliva.”Director Sam A. Davis of “Singers” called his short a “simple story about the power of music and art to bring us together in a moment when we live in an increasingly isolated world.”Cassandra Kulukundis, ‘One Battle After Another,’ win inaugural Oscar for best castingKulukundis thanked the academy for making this award happen: “I dedicate this to you and to the casting directors who never got a chance to get up here, who didn’t even get a chance to get their name on the movie.”Kulukundis has served as the casting director on past Oscar favorites including “The Brutalist” and “There Will Be Blood.”She has worked on all 10 of “One Battle After Another” director Paul Thomas Anderson’s feature films, beginning as an intern on his debut film “Hard Eight” in 1996.Conan teases the smartphone generationHost Conan O’Brien aimed his comedic barbs towards screenagers and the generally phone-obsessed in a short pre-taped segment about a (surely fictional) film lab that reimagines classic films to be optimal for smart phone viewing.So-called “advanced” technology isolates the most visually interesting part of the shot for the vertical-only version, but that is often not the most interesting or dynamic part of the shot. An example was the infamous orgasm scene from the late Rob Reiner’s “When Harry Met Sally,” where the vertical-only shot does not show an animated Meg Ryan, but rather a woman in the background who is taking a sip from a glass.‘Frankenstein’ gets wins for best costume design and best hair and makeupOnly five awards into the night, “Frankenstein” is a two-time winner already after taking home the Oscar for costume design, as well as hair and makeup.“While we’re making this film, we had the sense we’re part of something very special, and tonight confirms that,” makeup artist Mike Hill said. Jordan Samuel and Cliona Furey were the other artists on the award-winning team.“On behalf of myself and the amazing team that I work with, the artisans, the alchemists, dream weavers, we’re so grateful to the Academy for recognizing our craft,” said Kate Hawley, the film’s costume designer.‘Sinners’ starts off strong – and on stageMiles Caton and Raphael Saadiq are performing “I Lied to You,” the nominated original song from “Sinners.” They’re joined by a bevy of performers onstage — Misty Copeland, Eric Gales, Buddy Guy, Brittany Howard, Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, Jayme Lawson, Li Jun Li, Bobby Rush, Shaboozey and Alice Smith among them — for a near-recreation of the scene in “Sinners” where the song is introduced.It is one of the more memorable moments in the film, where a blues song in a Mississippi juke joint opens up to showcase hip-hop DJs, rock ‘n’ roll guitarists, ballerinas and more, illustrating the Black music genre’s place at the foundation of American popular culture.When the live tribute performance to “Sinners” wrapped on stage, there was a slew of applause, some of which came from people who stood for the ovation.The highest praise may have come from Michael B. Jordan himself, who nodded and smiled.The message was clear: The star approved, big time.The Girl Who Cried Pearls’ wins best animated shortThe Canadian film is about a poor boy who falls in love with a girl who cries those gemstones, and he decides to pawn them for money. Directed by Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski, the boy ends up making a choice between pearls and love. It takes place in Montreal.“To Canada,” Lavis and Szczerbowski said while accepting their award.‘KPop Demon Hunters’ wins best animated featureThree years ago, Arden Cho was ready to walk away from acting. She’d landed her first lead role in the Netflix series “Partner Track,” only to see it canceled after one season. She was heartbroken.Her agent wouldn’t let her go. “She refused to say, ‘You’re done.’ She just kept sending me things,” Cho said. “She just keep being like, ‘Look, I know you’re not auditioning. I know you’re done, but I think you’d like this.’”Now, Cho is juggling multiple projects after voicing the lead character Rumi in Netflix’s animated summertime sensation “KPop Demon Hunters,” which has become the all-time most-streamed movie on the platform — and spawned inescapable earworms “Golden” and “Soda Pop” as its soundtrack dominated pop charts.And now it’s an Oscar winner.“This is for Korea and Koreans everywhere,” said “KPop Demon Hunters” co-director Maggie Kang.Amy Madigan wins best supporting actressMadigan, following a deep cackle, said she thought of her speech in the shower the day before.“We’re kind of advised, ’Don’t say all these names, as nobody knows who the hell these people are,’” she said. “But you’re not rattling them off. They mean something to you; that you couldn’t be here without them.”AP Film Writers Jake Coyle and Lindsey Bahr both picked Teyana Taylor (“One Battle After Another”) to win best supporting actress. So did 40% of readers on apnews.com, with Amy Madigan (“Weapons”) their second pick.Madigan won — and Taylor seemed to be the first to leap from her seat in celebration when she was announced.Conan’s off and running with the jokesConan O’Brien is off and running at the Oscars.“I’m Conan O’Brien and I’m honored to be the last human host of the Academy Awards,” O’Brien said. “Yes! Yeah! Next year it’s going to be a Waymo in a tux.”And the jokes kept coming.“Last year when I hosted Los Angeles was on fire,” O’Brien said. “But this year, everything’s going great.”He also quipped that there’s an alternate Oscars being hosted by Kid Rock, a nod to the hubbub over Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show.And we’re off, with help from the Beastie Boys and Aunt ConanConan O’Brien’s opening skit: He complains about wearing too much makeup as Aunt Gladys from “Weapons,” says he looks like “Bette Davis with lupus” and it’s all done to the soundtrack of “Sabotage” from the Beastie Boys, all as he runs through various scenes of this year’s nominated films.“I can’t believe I learned Norwegian for this,” he says, via subtitles, at one point. He then got chased onto the stage by a horde of children.The irreverent tone for the opening is now set.What to expect from the 2026 OscarsConan O’Brien is returning as host for the second year in a row. Despite the war in Iran and expanding geopolitical turmoil, O’Brien has pledged an entertaining show in the mold of hosts like Bob Hope and Johnny Carson. “Let’s have fun with it, is my attitude,” O’Brien told reporters earlier in the week.Still, the already high security will be even greater this year at an Oscars, taking place two weeks after the United States and President Donald Trump launched the war with Iran. Some attendees wore pins reading “Artists for cease fire.””Of course, every year we monitor what’s going on in the world,” Raj Kapoor, executive producer of the show, said earlier in the week. “We have the support of the FBI and the LAPD, and it’s a close collaboration.”Two of the five best song nominees will be performed: “I Lied to You,” from “Sinners,” with Miles Caton, Raphael Saadiq and others; and “Golden” from “KPop Demon Hunters.”Oscars’ In Memoriam segment will be extendedThe Oscars will be saying farewell to a lot of cinema titans, and taking more time to do so.Among them are Robert Duvall, Robert Redford, Diane Keaton and Rob Reiner.Other talents who died in the last year include Brigitte Bardot, Val Kilmer, Michael Madsen, Terence Stamp, Diane Ladd, Sally Kirkland, Tom Stoppard and Malcolm-Jamal Warner.Already this year, the film world has lost Catherine O’Hara, Robert Carradine, Eric Dane, James Van Der Beek and Bud Cort.Among the foreign talents who died were Joan Plowright, Claudia Cardinale, Dharmendra, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Mohammad Bakri, Béla Tarr and Jimmy Cliff.Given the large number of bold-faced names, producers have decided the In Memoriam segment will be longer than usual.Assembling the segment involves deciding who gets placed in what order, choosing music and the graphic design of the names and titles, as well as where pauses are built in for the select giants of the film world.It’s up to the academy to decide who is included, which often leads to outcries about who gets excluded.Theatrical looks to best streaming, again”KPop Demon Hunters,” a Sony Pictures production that was sold to Netflix, was the most-watched movie of 2025. (It has 325 million views and counting, making it Netflix’s most-streamed movie ever.) But it seems all but certain that the night’s final award won’t go to a streaming release; Apple’s “CODA” remains the only streaming film to achieve that. Instead best picture is likely to go to an anomaly in today’s movie industry: big-budget original films from a personal vision.”Sinners” and “One Battle After Another” were both theatrical releases shot on film. And both came from Warner Bros., the legacy studio that’s agreed to merge with David Ellison’s new media colossus, Paramount Skydance. The $111 billion deal, which awaits regulatory approval, has rattled an industry already reconciling itself to the acquisitions of MGM (by Amazon) and 20th Century Fox (by The Walt Disney Co.).Elegy may mark Sunday’s Oscars. The in memoriam segment is expected to include, among many others, remembrances of Robert Redford, Diane Keaton and Robert Duvall. O’Brien, who had hosted a party attended by Rob and Michele Reiner the night before their deaths, has promised a “very powerful” tribute.New this year is a best casting category. Another innovation is a requirement that Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences members watch all nominees before voting. On the academy’s streaming platform — even Oscar voting is streamed — voters had to check a box attesting to having watched each nominee before voting in a category.Few sure things in the acting categoriesWhether those changes will have any effect on some of the night’s closest races remains to be seen. Coming into the show, best actor is one of the most hard-to-call categories. Chalamet had been seen as the front-runner for his performance in “Marty Supreme.” But a swaggering meta campaign, that drew headlines, of all things, a perceived slight of ballet and opera, may have helped put Jordan into the lead. (In Chalamet’s favor, the uproar only started as voting was ending.)While Jessie Buckley (“Hamnet”) is widely expecting to win best actress, a first for Irish performers, the supporting categories are highly competitive. Amy Madigan (“Weapons”) is the slight favorite in best supporting actress, but Teyana Taylor (“One Battle After Another”) and Wunmi Mosaku (“Sinners”) are in the mix, too.Despite almost no campaigning, Penn is viewed as the best supporting actor favorite. That award, could easily also go to Stellan Skarsgård (“Sentimental Value”) or Delroy Lindo (“Sinners”).Though the Oscars often feel largely removed from their times, a crop of nominees that explicitly grapple with the current political moment will be center stage. That includes not just “One Battle After Another,” which opens with a raid on an immigration detention facility, but movies like Kleber Mendonça Filho’s Brazilian political thriller “The Secret Agent” and Jafar Panahi’s Iranian revenge drama “It Was Just an Accident.”The war in Iran has particular meaning to Panahi, whose film is nominated for best international feature and for best screenplay. The esteemed Iranian filmmaker and last year’s Palme d’Or winner has made films clandestinely in his native Iran despite repeated imprisonment, travel ban and even home arrest. While promoting the film, Panahi was sentenced to a year in prison. At least one of his co-writer nominees, Mehdi Mahmoudian, was unable to leave Iran to attend Sunday’s awards.Twenty-three years ago, the Academy Awards were also held amid war in the Middle East. The 2003 Oscars took place just three days before the Iraq War began. Many in Hollywood protested the war. “Chicago” won best picture.
Conan O’Brien launched the 98th Academy Awards with a “Sabotage”-scored sprint through the nominees, dressed as Amy Madigan’s character in “Weapons,” and a plea for what he called “that rarest of qualities today: optimism.”
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O’Brien, hosting for the second time, alluded to “chaotic and frightening times” in his opening monologue at the Dolby Theatre. But he argued that the current geopolitical climate made the Oscars all the more resonate as a globally unifying force.
Jimmy Kimmel is back (again)
Jimmy Kimmel’s return to the Oscars stage (“Wait, am I not hosting?”) and ABC telecast where he served as host four times still can’t possibly be as dramatic as the year he just had.
ABC and parent company Disney yanked his late-night show “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” off the air in September for remarks he made following the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
Kimmel’s indefinite suspension was celebrated by President Donald Trump. But it wouldn’t even be a week before he returned to the air with much stronger ratings than before.
His jokes at Trump’s expense prompted the president to post that ABC needed to “get the bum off the air.”
But Kimmel instead got a contract extension in December.
‘Avatar: Fire and Ash’ gets win for best visual effects
The award recognizes the work of Joe Letteri, Richard Baneham, Eric Saindon and Daniel Barrett.
‘Frankenstein,’ picks up another win
Tamara Deverell and Shane Vieau won best production design for the film.
‘An intellectual cowboy who blazed his own trail’
Barbra Streisand’s tribute to Robert Redford highlighted the late actor-director’s history of defending press freedoms, protecting the environment and encouraging new voices in film.
“Bob had real backbone on and off the screen,” she said.
Babs, as Redford used to call her, sang “The Way We Were” at the end of her tribute.
“I miss him now more than ever, even though he loved teasing me,” she said, explaining how she got the nickname.
Rachel McAdams paid tribute to women — and Diane Keaton, in particular
“Believe me when I say there is an actress of my generation who was not inspired by and enthralled with her absolute singularity,” she said.
McAdams told the audience a Girl Scout song Keaton used to sing set on film sets:
“Make new friends, but keep the old. One is silver, the other is gold. A circle is round, it has no end. That’s how long, I will be your friend.”
Reiner’s actors join Billy Crystal onstage in tribute
Billy Crystal opened the in memoriam segment honoring his best friend, Rob Reiner.
He ticked off a list of Reiner’s films, including “When Harry Met Sally,” starring Crystal and Meg Ryan, “Stand By Me,” “Say Anything” and “This is Spinal Tap,” among many others.
A photo of Reiner and his wife, Michelle Singer Reiner, appeared behind Crystal.
The Reiners were found dead in their Los Angeles home in December. Their son, Nick Reiner, has been charged in the deaths of his parents and has pleaded not guilty.
Having a slew of actors with longstanding ties to Reiner — Meg Ryan, Kiefer Sutherland, Fred Savage, Demi Moore, John Cusack, Ione Skye and many others — come on stage for the tribute was reminiscent of how the Academy did the same for director John Hughes at the Oscars 16 years ago.
Ryan Coogler, ‘Sinners,’ wins best original screenplay
For his first original film, not adapted from any source material, Coogler won the original screenplay Oscar — his very first. He’s also up for more awards tonight.
Before accepting his award for original screenplay, Coogler embraced his wife, Zinzi Coogler, who is a producer and worked with him on “Sinners.” He then went down the line with his cast, hugging Jack O’Connell, Wunmi Mosaku, Delroy Lindo and, lastly, his frequent collaborator and friend, Michael B. Jordan.
During his speech, he asked the “Sinners” cast and crew to stand up. “You’re all winners in my book,” he said.
Paul Thomas Anderson, ‘One Battle After Another,’ wins best adapted screenplay
In adapting Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel about a subculture of aging rebels, “Vineland,” Anderson reworked everything from the timeline to the characters’ names to more details than can be listed in brief.
But he does capture the humor, the cynicism and the sweep of Pynchon, the sense of a ragged community of outsiders caught up by forces far beyond even its own paranoid assumptions.
“I wrote this movie for my kids to say sorry for the housekeeping mess that we left in this world we’re handing off to them,” Anderson said.
Sean Penn, best supporting actor winner, has skipped the Oscars, again
He won as supporting actor for “One Battle After Another.”
“Sean Penn couldn’t be here this evening,” presenter Kieran Culkin said. “Or didn’t want to, so I’ll be accepting the award on his behalf.”
Penn did little campaigning this awards season, and also stayed away from the Actor Awards and BAFTA Awards, where he won trophies.
It’s not the first time Penn has no-showed at the Oscars.
The 65-year-old actor has never appeared too attached to Hollywood hardware, whether he wins or loses. He previously gave one of his Oscars to Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Paul Thomas Anderson and Ryan Coogler win first Oscars
“I’m incredibly honored to be part of this history,” said Anderson, who loosely adapted Thomas Pynchon’s “Vineland.” “I wrote this movie for my kids to say sorry for the housekeeping mess but hopefully they will be the generation that brings some common sense and decency.”
The film also won best supporting actor for Penn, and the Oscars first award for best casting, for Cassandra Kulukundis.
Immediately after Anderson’s first Oscar, Ryan Coogler notched his first Academy Award, too. Coogler, the writer-director of “Sinners” won best original screenplay, and earned his own standing ovation.
An Oscars tie is rare, but not a first
The live action short category resulted in a tie (“Two People Exchanging Saliva” and “The Singers” each got statuettes) this year. But this is not the first time this has happened at the Oscars.
The most recent tie came during the 2013 Oscars honoring films from 2012, when “Zero Dark Thirty” and “Skyfall” tied for the sound editing category. There have been five other ties in Oscars history, making Sunday’s tie the seventh.
The first tie, which was at the 5th Academy Awards almost 100 years ago, was based on an old rule. Wallace Beery (“The Champ”) and Fredric March (“Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”) tied for best actor. They came within exactly one vote of each other, and in accordance with Academy rules at the time, they shared the recognition. That rule has since changed and only an exact match in totals would qualify as a tie today, according to the Academy.
2 live action shorts tie for the win in that category
“Thank you to the Academy for supporting a movie that is weird, that is queer, and made by a majority of women!” said Natalie Musteata of “Two People Exchanging Saliva.”
Director Sam A. Davis of “Singers” called his short a “simple story about the power of music and art to bring us together in a moment when we live in an increasingly isolated world.”
Cassandra Kulukundis, ‘One Battle After Another,’ win inaugural Oscar for best casting
Kulukundis thanked the academy for making this award happen: “I dedicate this to you and to the casting directors who never got a chance to get up here, who didn’t even get a chance to get their name on the movie.”
Kulukundis has served as the casting director on past Oscar favorites including “The Brutalist” and “There Will Be Blood.”
She has worked on all 10 of “One Battle After Another” director Paul Thomas Anderson’s feature films, beginning as an intern on his debut film “Hard Eight” in 1996.
Conan teases the smartphone generation
Host Conan O’Brien aimed his comedic barbs towards screenagers and the generally phone-obsessed in a short pre-taped segment about a (surely fictional) film lab that reimagines classic films to be optimal for smart phone viewing.
So-called “advanced” technology isolates the most visually interesting part of the shot for the vertical-only version, but that is often not the most interesting or dynamic part of the shot. An example was the infamous orgasm scene from the late Rob Reiner’s “When Harry Met Sally,” where the vertical-only shot does not show an animated Meg Ryan, but rather a woman in the background who is taking a sip from a glass.
‘Frankenstein’ gets wins for best costume design and best hair and makeup
Only five awards into the night, “Frankenstein” is a two-time winner already after taking home the Oscar for costume design, as well as hair and makeup.
“While we’re making this film, we had the sense we’re part of something very special, and tonight confirms that,” makeup artist Mike Hill said. Jordan Samuel and Cliona Furey were the other artists on the award-winning team.
“On behalf of myself and the amazing team that I work with, the artisans, the alchemists, dream weavers, we’re so grateful to the Academy for recognizing our craft,” said Kate Hawley, the film’s costume designer.
‘Sinners’ starts off strong – and on stage
Miles Caton and Raphael Saadiq are performing “I Lied to You,” the nominated original song from “Sinners.” They’re joined by a bevy of performers onstage — Misty Copeland, Eric Gales, Buddy Guy, Brittany Howard, Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, Jayme Lawson, Li Jun Li, Bobby Rush, Shaboozey and Alice Smith among them — for a near-recreation of the scene in “Sinners” where the song is introduced.
It is one of the more memorable moments in the film, where a blues song in a Mississippi juke joint opens up to showcase hip-hop DJs, rock ‘n’ roll guitarists, ballerinas and more, illustrating the Black music genre’s place at the foundation of American popular culture.
When the live tribute performance to “Sinners” wrapped on stage, there was a slew of applause, some of which came from people who stood for the ovation.
The highest praise may have come from Michael B. Jordan himself, who nodded and smiled.
The message was clear: The star approved, big time.
The Girl Who Cried Pearls’ wins best animated short
The Canadian film is about a poor boy who falls in love with a girl who cries those gemstones, and he decides to pawn them for money. Directed by Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski, the boy ends up making a choice between pearls and love. It takes place in Montreal.
“To Canada,” Lavis and Szczerbowski said while accepting their award.
‘KPop Demon Hunters’ wins best animated feature
Three years ago, Arden Cho was ready to walk away from acting. She’d landed her first lead role in the Netflix series “Partner Track,” only to see it canceled after one season. She was heartbroken.
Her agent wouldn’t let her go. “She refused to say, ‘You’re done.’ She just kept sending me things,” Cho said. “She just keep being like, ‘Look, I know you’re not auditioning. I know you’re done, but I think you’d like this.’”
Now, Cho is juggling multiple projects after voicing the lead character Rumi in Netflix’s animated summertime sensation “KPop Demon Hunters,” which has become the all-time most-streamed movie on the platform — and spawned inescapable earworms “Golden” and “Soda Pop” as its soundtrack dominated pop charts.
And now it’s an Oscar winner.
“This is for Korea and Koreans everywhere,” said “KPop Demon Hunters” co-director Maggie Kang.
Amy Madigan wins best supporting actress
Madigan, following a deep cackle, said she thought of her speech in the shower the day before.
“We’re kind of advised, ’Don’t say all these names, as nobody knows who the hell these people are,’” she said. “But you’re not rattling them off. They mean something to you; that you couldn’t be here without them.”
AP Film Writers Jake Coyle and Lindsey Bahr both picked Teyana Taylor (“One Battle After Another”) to win best supporting actress. So did 40% of readers on apnews.com, with Amy Madigan (“Weapons”) their second pick.
Madigan won — and Taylor seemed to be the first to leap from her seat in celebration when she was announced.
Conan’s off and running with the jokes
Conan O’Brien is off and running at the Oscars.
“I’m Conan O’Brien and I’m honored to be the last human host of the Academy Awards,” O’Brien said. “Yes! Yeah! Next year it’s going to be a Waymo in a tux.”
And the jokes kept coming.
“Last year when I hosted Los Angeles was on fire,” O’Brien said. “But this year, everything’s going great.”
He also quipped that there’s an alternate Oscars being hosted by Kid Rock, a nod to the hubbub over Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show.
And we’re off, with help from the Beastie Boys and Aunt Conan
Conan O’Brien’s opening skit: He complains about wearing too much makeup as Aunt Gladys from “Weapons,” says he looks like “Bette Davis with lupus” and it’s all done to the soundtrack of “Sabotage” from the Beastie Boys, all as he runs through various scenes of this year’s nominated films.
“I can’t believe I learned Norwegian for this,” he says, via subtitles, at one point. He then got chased onto the stage by a horde of children.
The irreverent tone for the opening is now set.
What to expect from the 2026 Oscars
Conan O’Brien is returning as host for the second year in a row. Despite the war in Iran and expanding geopolitical turmoil, O’Brien has pledged an entertaining show in the mold of hosts like Bob Hope and Johnny Carson. “Let’s have fun with it, is my attitude,” O’Brien told reporters earlier in the week.
Still, the already high security will be even greater this year at an Oscars, taking place two weeks after the United States and President Donald Trump launched the war with Iran. Some attendees wore pins reading “Artists for cease fire.”
“Of course, every year we monitor what’s going on in the world,” Raj Kapoor, executive producer of the show, said earlier in the week. “We have the support of the FBI and the LAPD, and it’s a close collaboration.”
Two of the five best song nominees will be performed: “I Lied to You,” from “Sinners,” with Miles Caton, Raphael Saadiq and others; and “Golden” from “KPop Demon Hunters.”
Oscars’ In Memoriam segment will be extended
The Oscars will be saying farewell to a lot of cinema titans, and taking more time to do so.
Among them are Robert Duvall, Robert Redford, Diane Keaton and Rob Reiner.
Other talents who died in the last year include Brigitte Bardot, Val Kilmer, Michael Madsen, Terence Stamp, Diane Ladd, Sally Kirkland, Tom Stoppard and Malcolm-Jamal Warner.
Already this year, the film world has lost Catherine O’Hara, Robert Carradine, Eric Dane, James Van Der Beek and Bud Cort.
Among the foreign talents who died were Joan Plowright, Claudia Cardinale, Dharmendra, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Mohammad Bakri, Béla Tarr and Jimmy Cliff.
Given the large number of bold-faced names, producers have decided the In Memoriam segment will be longer than usual.
Assembling the segment involves deciding who gets placed in what order, choosing music and the graphic design of the names and titles, as well as where pauses are built in for the select giants of the film world.
It’s up to the academy to decide who is included, which often leads to outcries about who gets excluded.
Theatrical looks to best streaming, again
“KPop Demon Hunters,” a Sony Pictures production that was sold to Netflix, was the most-watched movie of 2025. (It has 325 million views and counting, making it Netflix’s most-streamed movie ever.) But it seems all but certain that the night’s final award won’t go to a streaming release; Apple’s “CODA” remains the only streaming film to achieve that. Instead best picture is likely to go to an anomaly in today’s movie industry: big-budget original films from a personal vision.
“Sinners” and “One Battle After Another” were both theatrical releases shot on film. And both came from Warner Bros., the legacy studio that’s agreed to merge with David Ellison’s new media colossus, Paramount Skydance. The $111 billion deal, which awaits regulatory approval, has rattled an industry already reconciling itself to the acquisitions of MGM (by Amazon) and 20th Century Fox (by The Walt Disney Co.).
Elegy may mark Sunday’s Oscars. The in memoriam segment is expected to include, among many others, remembrances of Robert Redford, Diane Keaton and Robert Duvall. O’Brien, who had hosted a party attended by Rob and Michele Reiner the night before their deaths, has promised a “very powerful” tribute.
New this year is a best casting category. Another innovation is a requirement that Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences members watch all nominees before voting. On the academy’s streaming platform — even Oscar voting is streamed — voters had to check a box attesting to having watched each nominee before voting in a category.
Few sure things in the acting categories
Whether those changes will have any effect on some of the night’s closest races remains to be seen. Coming into the show, best actor is one of the most hard-to-call categories. Chalamet had been seen as the front-runner for his performance in “Marty Supreme.” But a swaggering meta campaign, that drew headlines, of all things, a perceived slight of ballet and opera, may have helped put Jordan into the lead. (In Chalamet’s favor, the uproar only started as voting was ending.)
While Jessie Buckley (“Hamnet”) is widely expecting to win best actress, a first for Irish performers, the supporting categories are highly competitive. Amy Madigan (“Weapons”) is the slight favorite in best supporting actress, but Teyana Taylor (“One Battle After Another”) and Wunmi Mosaku (“Sinners”) are in the mix, too.
Despite almost no campaigning, Penn is viewed as the best supporting actor favorite. That award, could easily also go to Stellan Skarsgård (“Sentimental Value”) or Delroy Lindo (“Sinners”).
Though the Oscars often feel largely removed from their times, a crop of nominees that explicitly grapple with the current political moment will be center stage. That includes not just “One Battle After Another,” which opens with a raid on an immigration detention facility, but movies like Kleber Mendonça Filho’s Brazilian political thriller “The Secret Agent” and Jafar Panahi’s Iranian revenge drama “It Was Just an Accident.”
The war in Iran has particular meaning to Panahi, whose film is nominated for best international feature and for best screenplay. The esteemed Iranian filmmaker and last year’s Palme d’Or winner has made films clandestinely in his native Iran despite repeated imprisonment, travel ban and even home arrest. While promoting the film, Panahi was sentenced to a year in prison. At least one of his co-writer nominees, Mehdi Mahmoudian, was unable to leave Iran to attend Sunday’s awards.
Twenty-three years ago, the Academy Awards were also held amid war in the Middle East. The 2003 Oscars took place just three days before the Iraq War began. Many in Hollywood protested the war. “Chicago” won best picture.
