It has been another great year for Irish talent as green mixes with gold on the biggest night in show business.
Once again, we're primed for something that has been a long time coming - all the way back to when the Oscars began in 1929, in fact.
Irish Oscar winners - the full roll call
Yes, we said that in 2024 when Oppenheimer star Cillian Murphy became the first Irishman to win Best Actor - and now everything points to Jessie Buckley making history in the Best Actress category for her searing performance as Agnes in Hamnet.
Watch: Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal discuss Hamnet with RTÉ Entertainment's Alan Corr
All Irish eyes are on the Killarney native - a red-hot favourite to rival any in Academy Awards lore - but there are a handful of compatriots who also deserve their close-up in the nation's consciousness.
Hamnet's Coleraine-born author Maggie O'Farrell has been shortlisted alongside director Chloé Zhao for their screenplay of O'Farrell's bestseller, which "tells the powerful love story that inspired the creation of Shakespeare's timeless masterpiece, Hamlet".
Dubliner Richard Baneham, the visual effects lynchpin of the Avatar franchise, is all set to win his third Oscar for his work on the latest instalment, Avatar: Fire and Ash. Three!
Director John Kelly and producer Andrew Freedman are among the nominees in the Animated Short category for their gorgeous film Retirement Plan.
Oscar veterans Ed Guiney and Andrew Lowe from the Dublin-based Element Pictures are back on the red carpet once again with four nods for their latest film, the dark sci-fi comedy Bugonia, including Best Picture, with the behind-the-scenes duo among the producers nominated in that category.
So, are you going to stay up?
Shameless plug: live coverage is from 11:00pm on RTÉ One and the RTÉ Player on Sunday.
The most bizarre moments in Oscar history
We know that One Battle After Another and Sinners are going to win plenty and fight it out for Best Picture. We know that the stars of KPop Demon Hunters will soundtrack two victories - Best Animated Feature and Best Original Song - with a feel-great performance of the aptly titled Golden. We know returning host Conan O'Brien is going to bring the laughs. And, sure, we claim him as well.
But, best of all, we know that Jessie Buckley is going to give us so much to talk about and be proud of come Monday morning.
Jessie Buckley: Ireland's star making waves worldwide
Did you ever think while sitting in a cinema five years ago that Ireland would have Best Actor and Best Actress Oscar winners within the space of two years?
Hollywood nights, indeed.
Here's a look at the headline categories:
International Feature Film
The Nominees:
The Secret Agent (Brazil)
It Was Just an Accident (France)
Sentimental Value (Norway)
Sirāt (Spain)
The Voice of Hind Rajab (Tunisia)
Winner: Sentimental Value (Norway)
Since the nominations were announced, writer-director Joachim Trier's Sentimental Value has been the favourite, and it'll be Trier and co making their way up the steps at the Dolby Theatre. Sentimental Value has nine nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, Original Screenplay, and in all four acting categories for stars Renate Reinsve, Stellan Skarsgård, Elle Fanning, and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas. Its 'closest' challenger, the fabulous 70s thriller The Secret Agent, has four.
That's what they call "a lock" in LA, but in the absence of suspense, what's been great to read about is the feeling of fraternity between the five nominated filmmakers and their delight that everyone's work is receiving international attention. Trier told AFP it was more about recognition than competition, while Oliver Laxe, director of the stunning Sirāt, concluded: "I think nobody loses here. We all win." So, the only thing to see in this category is... all five films. But start with Sentimental Value. It's family drama of the best kind that you can sit down with anyone to watch.
Actress in a Supporting Role
The Nominees:
Elle Fanning - Sentimental Value
Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas - Sentimental Value
Amy Madigan - Weapons
Wunmi Mosaku - Sinners
Teyana Taylor - One Battle After Another
Winner: Amy Madigan - Weapons
Forty years on from her first acting nomination - also in this category for Twice in a Lifetime - third-generation Irish-American Amy Madigan is back in the biggest spotlight of the lot, and is peaking at exactly the right time. While One Battle After Another's Teyana Taylor won at the Golden Globes and Sinners' Wunmi Mosaku won at the BAFTAs, Madigan added to her Critics Choice Award win at the Actor Awards, formerly the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Awards, two weekends ago. The Actor Awards and the Oscars have mirrored each other for winners on 23 occasions since 1995, and although Madigan is Weapons' sole Oscar nominee, it just feels like it will be her moment. As she said in her charming speech at the Actor Awards, delivered ahead of the Oscars voting deadline, she's "been doing this a long-ass time".
Madigan is 75 now, has worked with everyone, and Academy Award voters adore a veteran who's still swinging for the fences - as she does in Weapons. Best known by millions as the long-suffering Chanice in the beloved Uncle Buck, Madigan arrives during the second half of Weapons as instrument-of-evil Gladys and makes the movie, giving modern cinema one of its best, and most unusual, villains. Charisma galore, and now with the awards goodwill to match.
Actor in a Supporting Role
The Nominees:
Benicio Del Toro - One Battle After Another
Jacob Elordi - Frankenstein
Delroy Lindo - Sinners
Sean Penn - One Battle After Another
Stellan Skarsgård - Sentimental Value
Winner: Sean Penn - One Battle After Another
This one is all about the veterans: Delroy Lindo for Sinners, Sean Penn for One Battle After Another, and Stellan Skarsgård for Sentimental Value. The heart says Lindo, but the head says Penn. Penn is already a double Best Actor Oscar winner for Milk in 2009 and Mystic River in 2004, so this is an opportunity for him to join the very exclusive hat-trick pantheon, 17 years on from his previous nomination.
While the early predictions favoured Golden Globe winner Skarsgård, Penn has won at the BAFTA and Actor Awards of late - and the man who has made an art form of not campaigning didn't turn up to accept either gong! The winner at the Actor Awards has gone on to win the Oscar on 22 occasions since 1995, and it's unlikely that Penn's penchant for a no-show will affect his Oscar chances. As One Battle After Another's maliciously messed-up Col. Steven J. Lockjaw, Penn's is the most powerful performance in this category - essentially a co-lead - and that matters more than an appearance on the red-carpet radar.
Actor in a Leading Role
The Nominees:
Actor in a Leading Role
Timothée Chalamet - Marty Supreme
Leonardo DiCaprio - One Battle After Another
Ethan Hawke - Blue Moon
Michael B Jordan - Sinners
Wagner Moura - The Secret Agent
Winner: Michael B Jordan - Sinners
Late-stage momentum in an Oscars year is the stuff acceptance speech dreams are made of - and Sinners' Michael B Jordan has it and then some. After his Critics Choice and Golden Globe wins, the arrival of Timothée Chalamet as the new young king was widely expected, but Chalamet's challenge lost its mojo, the BAFTA went to I Swear's Robert Aramayo (not in Oscars contention, as the film has yet to be released in US), and then Jordan triumphed at the Actor Awards on Sunday, 1 March. The room erupted - and Jordan himself seemed to be the most surprised person of the lot as he talked about his early days and sense of community with his fellows thesps. "This ride has been unbelievable," he said at a ceremony where Sinners also took the Cast award. And the ride is not over yet...
Since 1995, there have been 24 years in which the Best Actor winner at the Actor Awards (formerly the Screen Actors Guild Awards) also went on to win the Academy Award. Polling for the Oscars closed on Thursday, 5 March, and late voting is a thing. This is Jordan's first Oscar nomination, and playing the roles of twins Smoke and Stack in vampire thriller Sinners is something Oscar voters will devour. He will definitely have a speech ready this time.
Writing (Adapted Screenplay)
The Nominees:
Will Tracy - Bugonia
Guillermo del Toro - Frankenstein
Chloé Zhao and Maggie O'Farrell - Hamnet
Paul Thomas Anderson - One Battle After Another
Clint Bentley and Greg Kwedar - Train Dreams
Writing (Original Screenplay)
The Nominees:
Robert Kaplow - Blue Moon
Jafar Panahi - It Was Just an Accident
Josh Safdie and Ronald Bronstein - Marty Supreme
Joachim Trier and Eskil Vogt - Sentimental Value
Ryan Coogler - Sinners
Winners: Paul Thomas Anderson - One Battle After Another and Ryan Coogler - Sinners
Oscars night is already all about these two writer-directors (more on that gongs ding-dong later), and the Screenplay awards will make sure that both receive individual recognition, regardless of what happens elsewhere on Sunday. Anderson and Coogler have cleaned up in the writing categories leading up to the Oscars, including at the Writers Guild of America (WGA) Awards last Sunday, and their films dominate this year's Oscars shortlist: One Battle After Another with 13 nominations and Sinners with a record-breaking 16.
Further proof? Writer-directors are adored by Oscar voters: witness Anora's Sean Baker, Anatomy of a Fall's Justine Triet, Women Talking's Sarah Polley, Belfast's Kenneth Branagh, CODA's Sian Heder, The Father's Florian Zeller, Promising Young Woman's Emerald Fennell, Jojo Rabbit's Taika Watiti, BlacKkKlansman's Spike Lee, Moonlight's Barry Jenkins, and The Big Short's Adam McKay as screenplay winners in the past decade. Anderson and Coogler are both waiting on their first Oscar wins (more on that later, too...), and all that will change on Sunday.
Actress in a Leading Role
The Nominees:
Jessie Buckley - Hamnet
Rose Byrne - If I Had Legs I'd Kick You
Kate Hudson - Song Sung Blue
Renate Reinsve - Sentimental Value
Emma Stone - Bugonia
Winner: Jessie Buckley - Hamnet
Let's keep it brief. Like Cillian Murphy two years ago, this is a coronation. Jessie Buckley has steamrolled awards season with her performance in Hamnet, winning the Critics Choice, Golden Globe, BAFTA, and Actor Awards on the way to the Oscars. The Actor Awards and the Oscars have mirrored each other for Best Actress 21 times since 1995. And this year they will again. To put the achievement in context, only two other Irish women had been shortlisted in this category prior to Buckley: Saoirse Ronan (Brooklyn, Lady Bird, and Little Women) and Ruth Negga (Loving) - and the breakthrough nomination came as recently as 2016 with Ronan's Brooklyn nod. Ten years later, we have Ireland's first winner. On the awards website Gold Derby, Buckley's chances of winning stand at 97.4%. It's safe to open the minerals now if you want.
Directing
The Nominees:
Paul Thomas Anderson - One Battle After Another
Ryan Coogler - Sinners
Josh Safdie - Marty Supreme
Joachim Trier - Sentimental Value
Chloé Zhao - Hamnet
Predicted Winner: Paul Thomas Anderson - One Battle After Another
Paul Thomas Anderson's Oscar nominations tally stretches back 28 years and now stands at 14 - without a win to date. That will change on Sunday, first with the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar, and then he will double his haul here. Anderson won at the Directors Guild of America (DGA) Awards, and the winner of the DGA Award has been honoured with the Best Director Oscar on all but eight occasions since the 1940s. One Battle After Another also comes into the Oscars with the most nominations of Anderson's career to date - 13.
The challenger is Sinners' Ryan Coogler, who has seen his film get a shot of life in the last few weeks of campaigning with Best Cast and Best Actor (Michael B Jordan) at the Actor Awards. A win here would see Coogler become the first black filmmaker to win Best Director. Like Anderson, he is already assured an Oscar on Sunday, in Coogler's case for Best Original Screenplay (see above). That hand of DGA history is on Anderson's shoulder after all these years, however, with Coogler's glory in this category still to come. And Coogler could still walk away with the biggest award of the night...
Best Picture
The Nominees:
Bugonia
F1
Frankenstein
Hamnet
Marty Supreme
One Battle After Another
The Secret Agent
Sentimental Value
Sinners
Train Dreams
How apt that the final award on Sunday will be a cliffhanger involving two overtly political films: Paul Thomas Anderson's One Battle After Another and Ryan Coogler's Sinners, with Oscar watchers vexed as to whether a surprise is on the cards. Any film that wins at the Directors Guild of America (DGA), Producers Guild of America (PGA), and Writers Guild of America (WGA) Awards is the red-hot favourite for the Best Picture Oscar. Anderson's action-comedy has won at all three, and the Oscar winner for Best Picture has mirrored the PGA winner 26 times since 1990. Strengthening its case as the film to beat, One Battle... has also won at the BAFTAs, Golden Globes, and Critics Choice Awards.
But there's a catch. Upsets after PGA victories happen - witness Spotlight, Moonlight, and Parasite taking the Best Picture gong in the past decade after missing out on the PGA win. Going further back, Brokeback Mountain swept the board in the build-up to the Academy Awards in 2006 and lost to Crash. Sinners - a vampire thriller that says so much about America's bloody history - has a record-breaking 16 Oscar nominations, three more than One Battle After Another. Is that a portent of a Best Picture win? Is this another year when the Best Director and Best Picture winners diverge? It has happened 28 times. Adding to the intrigue, Sinners has just scooped Best Cast at the Actor Awards, so it's on performers' minds - they're the largest voting block at the Academy Awards - and voting for the Oscars was still open when it won.
Remember: this is the only Oscars category that's a one-to-ten preferential ballot, so if the number-one vote was split sufficiently among a handful of nominees, and Sinners received the majority of number-two votes, it would get the gold. Watch to see if Sinners star Michael B Jordan wins Best Actor - a victory for him and Oscar voters could be Sinning when it comes to Best Picture.
The 98th Academy Awards, hosted by Conan O'Brien, will be shown live on RTÉ One and the RTÉ Player from 11:00pm on Sunday, 15 March, and the ceremony will also air on RTÉ2 on Monday evening from 9:30pm.
