NEW YORK \u2014 If there were any doubt, the first few days of Hollywood’s year-end awards has already made it abundantly clear: Paul Thomas Anderson’s \u201cOne Battle After Another\u201d is the Oscar front-runner.<\/p>\n
On Monday, \u201cOne Battle After Another\u201d won best film at the 35th Gotham Awards. On Tuesday, it was named best film by the New York Film Critics Circle. On Wednesday, it swept the National Board of Review Awards, winning best film, best director for Anderson and acting awards for Leonardo DiCaprio, Benicio del Toro and newcomer Chase Infiniti. <\/p>\n
Expect to hear this pun a lot: one award after another. <\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t expect this, actually,\u201d Anderson said at the Gothams. \u201cI started to think I didn\u2019t know what was going on.\u201d<\/p>\n
That may be the first, and last, time Anderson can say that this awards season. <\/p>\n
\u201cOne Battle After Another,\u201d a father-daughter tale of political resistance in the face of recurring oppression, has firmly established itself as the movie of the moment. With an opening scene depicting a raid at an immigrant detention facility, Anderson’s opus has struck critics and moviegoers, alike, for its contemporary relevance in the first year of President Donald Trump’s second term. Even foes of the film, like conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, have predicted it will \u201cwin all the Academy Awards.\u201d <\/p>\n
Yet Anderson’s film is, in many ways, an Academy Awards oddity. It’s a critically acclaimed release that skipped film festivals. It’s a big-budget studio movie that wasn’t a hit. In fact, should \u201cOne Battle After Another\u201d go on to win at the March 15 Oscars, it could be one of the only money-losers to ever win the industry’s top honor. <\/p>\n Maya Rudolph, left, and Paul Thomas Anderson attend The Gotham Film Awards at Cipriani Wall Street on Monday, Dec. 1, 2025, in New York. Credit: AP\/Evan Agostini<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n Smaller films have, increasingly, won best picture. That includes indies like \u201cThe Hurt Locker,\u201d \u201cMoonlight\u201d and \u201cNomadland\u201d \u2014 much-praised films with minuscule box office. Hollywood long ago got used to honoring films that exist largely outside its mainstream, franchise-obsessed business. And the notion of what constitutes a best-picture movie has grown elastic. \u201cParasite,\u201d \u201cEverything Everywhere All at Once\u201d and, the most recent winner, \u201cAnora,\u201d have all shaken traditional notions of Oscar material. <\/p>\n But even the smallest Oscar winners have been commercial successes. Even \u201cCODA,\u201d the pandemic-era 2022 winner that went straight to streaming, was a big win for the then-nascent Apple TV. Historically, Hollywood likes to reward winners. <\/p>\n \u201cOne Battle After Another\u201d represents something different. With a production budget of at least $130 million (some reports have it much higher) and another $70 million in marketing costs, it will have to have an extraordinary after-theater life to break even. Thus far, the Warner Bros. release has made $70.6 million domestically and $131.6 million overseas \u2014 great sums for an adult-oriented, R-rated, auteur-driven film that runs nearly three hours. <\/p>\n Still, Variety earlier estimated \u201cOne Battle After Another\u201d will lose $100 million, a figure that Warner Bros. has disputed. It’s too harsh a label, but such a discrepancy could make \u201cOne Battle After Another\u201d tagged as the first best picture-winning flop. <\/p>\n Chase Infiniti attends The Gotham Film Awards at Cipriani Wall Street on Monday, Dec. 1, 2025, in New York. Credit: AP\/Evan Agostini<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n Awards season has a long way to go. None of the awards dished out this week has any direct correlation with academy voters. Some contenders, like A24’s \u201cMarty Supreme,\u201d have yet to hit theaters. Others, like Focus Features’ \u201cHamnet,\u201d are just arriving. Support is also strong for another Warner Bros. title, Ryan Coogler’s \u201cSinners,\u201d which might pose the stiffest competition for \u201cOne Battle After Another.\u201d Both films are returning to IMAX screens on Dec. 12. <\/p>\n But a bottom line in the red is far from a unique cross to bear this fall. Aside from the blockbuster launches of \u201cZootopia 2\u201d and \u201cWicked: For Good,\u201d waves of would-be awards contenders \u2014 films like \u201cThe Smashing Machine,\u201d \u201cRoofman\u201d and \u201cChristy\u201d\u2014 have fizzled with ticket buyers. It’s been a grueling fall for a wide spectrum of contenders, a context that makes \u201cOne Battle After Another,\u201d comparatively, a smash success. <\/p>\n The biggest financial ding against it, really, is that it cost a lot \u2014 arguably too much \u2014 to make. At a time when so few films anything like \u201cOne Battle After Another\u201d get greenlit, let alone with such budgets, the cost of \u201cOne Battle After Another\u201d could even be seen as a badge of honor. Here is a movie that win, lose or draw, is in the fight for a kind of moviemaking that’s under siege. To quote DiCaprio’s Bob Ferguson: \u201cViva la revolution!\u201d <\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.newsday.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" NEW YORK \u2014 If there were any doubt, the first few days of Hollywood’s year-end awards has already made it abundantly clear: Paul Thomas Anderson’s \u201cOne Battle After Another\u201d is the Oscar front-runner. On Monday, \u201cOne Battle After Another\u201d won best film at the 35th Gotham Awards. On Tuesday, it was named best film by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2185961,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[359676,21741,21912,307696],"class_list":["post-2185960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-ap-a-wire","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-wires-bot"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/A-string-of-awards-makes-it-clear-One-Battle-After.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2185960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2185960"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2185960\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2185962,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2185960\/revisions\/2185962"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2185961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2185960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2185960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2185960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Chase](\"https:\/\/www.newsday.com\/_next\/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.newsday.com%2Fimage-service%2Fversion%2Fc%3AYjExY2YxYWQtZjQ4MC00%3AZGEzZDZjNzgtYmRhNS00%2Fcopy-of-2025-gotham-film-awards-arrivals.jpeg%3Ff%3DLandscape%2B16%253A9%26w%3D768%26q%3D1&w=1920&q=80\"\/)