2025 Oscars: Best Sound Predictions
Nominations voting is from January 8-12, 2025, with official Oscar nominations announced January 17, 2025. Final voting is February 11-18, 2025. And finally, the 97th Oscars telecast will be broadcast on Sunday, March 2, and air live on ABC at 7 p.m. ET/ 4 p.m. PT. We update our picks throughout awards season, so keep checking IndieWire for all our 2025 Oscar predictions.
The State of the Race
“Dune: Part Two” (Warner Bros.) is the early Best Sound favorite among other standouts that include “Civil War” (A24), “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” (Warner Bros.), “A Quiet Place: Day One” (Paramount), and “Twisters” (Universal). The festival season will see the premieres of “Blitz” (Apple TV+) and “Joker: Folie à Deux” (Warner Bros.), and fall/holiday contenders include “Gladiator II” (Paramount), “Megalopolis” (Lionsgate), “Nosferatu” (Focus Features), “A Complete Unknown” (Searchlight Pictures), and “Wicked” (Universal).
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In “Dune: Part Two,” Oscar-winning supervising sound editor/sound designer Richard King (“Dunkirk,” “Inception”) was reunited with re-recording mixers Ron Bartlett and Doug Hemphill and worked with director Denis Villeneuve for the first time. “Dune” won the sound Oscar, but the sequel was more action-driven with lots of battles on Arrakis, as well as the noise of Harkonnen crowds during the gladiator fights on Giedi Prime. Crucially, there were many sand recordings in the field and on the foley stage, the most interesting of which were low-end groans. Plus, the sandworms were much more prominent and required more movement sounds in the sequel.
Alex Garland’s “Civil War” required the sound of authentic combat zones experienced by the four journalists (Kirsten Dunst, Wagner Moura, Cailee Spaeny, and Stephen McKinley Henderson) on their East Coast road trip, which culminates the final assault on D.C. and the White House. Sound editor Glenn Freemantle (the Oscar-winning “Gravity”) emphasized the reality of the loud, chaotic gunfire and explosions within each environment. But the sound team saved the best for last: the distinctive sound of gunfire hitting concrete and metal during the climactic storming of the nation’s capital.
George Miller’s “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” featured a more intense soundscape by sound designer and re-recording mixer Robert Mackenzie for the action set pieces across the expanded wasteland. This was in collaboration with composer Tom Holkenborg and his rock opera soundtrack. Thus, there was a unified sound mix of cars and bikes filled with human voices, sound effects, music, and silence. The highlight was the 15-minute “Stowaway to Nowhere” sequence, where raiders ambush the War Rig driven by Praetorian Jack (Tom Burke) and Furiosa.
Michael Sarnoski’s “A Quiet Place: Day One” prequel required a new soundscape to accompany the alien invasion of Manhattan, which finds Sam (Lupita Nyong’o) determined to grab the last slice of pizza in the city. Supervising sound editor/re-recording mixer Lee Salevan reveled in recording everyday sounds, such as dripping water and creaking chainlink fences that are suddenly amplified. Additionally, the alien creatures roam Manhattan in a pack and make more complex sounds.
Lee Isaac Chung’s “Twisters,” which boasts six different tornadoes created by ILM, required distinctive soundscapes from Oscar-winning supervising sound editors Al Nelson and Bj?rn Ole Schroeder (“Top Gun: Maverick”). They were variations of a kind of freight train sound with howls, pulses, and whipping winds, run through a filter and treated as specifically orchestrated layers.
Luca Guadagnino’s “Challengers” (Amazon MGM Studios) treats love and tennis as a competition between rivals Mike Faist, Josh O’Connor, and the woman in their life, Zendaya. The sound design by supervising sound editor Craig Berkey and sound designer Paul Carter focused on the tennis combatants, emphasizing the racquets hitting balls and shoe squeaks, recorded by sound mixer Lisa Pi?ero with authentic slap echo. They picked up what they could naturally (building an effective library of reverb) and added the rest in post.
“Emilia Pérez” (Netflix), the genre-defying crime musical from Jacques Audiard, is a surreal blend of family drama, narcotics thriller, and musical. It stars Zoe Salda?a as a disgruntled lawyer who assists the titular Mexican cartel leader (Karla Sofía Gascón) in undergoing sex reassignment surgery to evade capture and affirm her gender. Supervising sound editor Aymeric Devoldère handled the crucial musical numbers with re-recording sound mixer Cyril Holtzm, who created a new vocal tool to stylize and modulate Gascón’s singing performances.
“Longlegs” (Neon), Osgood Perkins’ horror thriller, centered around Nicolas Cage’s serial killer, boasts a terrifying soundscape from sound designer and editor Eugenio Battaglia, who leaned on the glam rock aesthetic for creating creepy sounds as well. Every creaky noise, heartbeat, and footstep was recorded at different auditory levels to put us in the confusing mindscape of FBI agent Lee Harker (Maika Monroe).
“Inside Out 2” (Pixar/Disney), the animated sequel from director Kelsey Mann, introduced the hyperactive Anxiety (Maya Hawke) as the newest and most resonant emotion for 13-year-old Riley (Kensington Tallman). Returning sound designer Ren Klyce had a much larger soundscape to deal with inside Riley’s mind, as well as the addition of hockey action.
“The Wild Robot” (DreamWorks/Universal), directed by Chris Sanders, is an animated sci-fi adventure that finds robot Roz (Lupita Nyong’o) washed ashore on an uninhabited island, who must adapt and live among the animals. The big push was to make the actress’ voice as Roz artificial yet indiscernible from a human voice without digital manipulation. The sound team was led by legendary sound designer Randy Thom (director of sound design at Skywalker Sound), supervising sound editor Brian Chumney, and supervising sound editor/re-recording mixer Leff Lefferts.
As for the rest: “Blitz,” by British director Steve McQueen, concerns Londoners during the Blitz of World War II and stars Saoirse Ronan, Elliott Heffernan, and singer/songwriter Paul Weller in his acting debut. It centers on youngster Heffernan, sent to the countryside for safekeeping, who’s determined to reunite with his mother (Ronan) and grandfather (Weller) at their home in London. Handling the myriad sounds of London during wartime, especially with the loud, destructive bombings, is the sound team led by supervising sound editor/re-recording mixer Paul Cotterell.
“Gladiator II,” Ridley Scott’s sequel to his Oscar winner, takes place two decades later as the Roman Empire continues to implode. Handling the sound design are supervising sound editor/re-recording mixer Matthew Collinge, supervising sound editor Danny Sheehan, and Oscar-winning re-recording mixer Paul Massey (“Bohemian Rhapsody”). One of their highlights is the gladiator fights featuring Lucius (Paul Mescal), the former heir to the Empire, forced to enter the Colosseum to take on Pedro Pascal’s Roman general, Marcus Acacius.
“Megalopolis,” Francis Ford Coppola’s $120 million epic sci-fi passion project, explores the collapse of New York as a dark analogy with the fall of Rome. Adam Driver’s idealistic architect fights the city’s old guard in an attempt to create a utopia with his miracle-building material, which contains a sound design in keeping with his operatic vision, led by sound designer Nathan Robitaille, supervising sound editor Nelson Ferreira, and re-recording mixer Christian T. Cooke.
“Nosferatu,” director Robert Eggers’ passion project, reworks the legendary silent vampire film by F.W. Murnau with Bill Skarsg?rd as the infamous Count Orlok, Lily-Rose Depp as Ellen Hutter, and Nicholas Hoult as her husband. Damian Volpe, sound designer/supervising sound editor/re-recording mixer, handled the unnerving soundscape of roving from 19th-century London to a Gothic castle, where the couple is haunted by dreams that could be harbingers of what’s to come and peek-a-boo with the elusive vampire, lurking in the shadows.
“Joker: Folie à Deux,” Todd Phillips’ musical thriller, picks up with Arthur/Joker (Joaquin Phoenix) facing the death penalty for multiple murders and striking up a delusional romance with Lady Gaga’s Harley Quinn while incarcerated in Arkham Asylum. The sound team had the weirdness of the musical sequences to soundscape along with the Joker mayhem. It was led by Oscar-winning sound designer/supervising sound editor Ethan Van der Ryn (“King Kong,” “The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers”), sound designer/supervising sound editor Erik Aadahl, and re-recording mixers Tom Ozanich and Dean Zupancic.
In “Wicked,” Jon Chu’s adaptation of the Broadway musical by Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman, we get the unlikely friendship between Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo), a misunderstood girl with green skin, and the popular Galinda (Ariana Grande), who eventually become the Wicked Witch of the West and Glinda the Good. The fantasy-laden soundscape encompasses the Land of Oz, including the magical Shiz University, where they first meet, along with all of the musical sequences. The team was led by supervising sound editor/re-recording sound mixer John Marquis and Oscar-winning re-recording mixer Andy Nelson (“Les Miserables”).
“A Complete Unknown,” James Mangold’s Bob Dylan biopic starring Timothée Chalamet, chronicles the folk star’s rise in New York’s West Village in 1961 to the controversial 1965 Newport Folk Festival, where he turned electric. The sound team handling the musical performances is led by Oscar-winning supervising sound editor Donald Sylvester (“Ford v Ferrari”) and re-recording sound mixer Massey.
Potential nominees are listed in alphabetical order; no film will be deemed a frontrunner until we have seen it.
Frontrunners
“Civil War”
“Dune: Part Two”
“Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga”
“A Quiet Place: Day One”
“Twisters”
Contenders
“Blitz”
“Challengers”
“A Complete Unknown”
“Emilia Pérez”
“Gladiator II”
“Inside Out 2”
“Joker: Folie à Deux”
“Longlegs”
“Megalopolis”
“Nosferatu”
“Wicked”
“The Wild Robot”
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