Sports fans spendt Super Bowl Sunday debating (and betting on) whether the New England Patriots or the Seattle Seahawks will be taking home the Vince Lombardi trophy. But for film fans, Super Bowl LX was just the thing that happened in between movie trailers. While the number of Big Game movie spots has declined in recent years, studios still use the spotlight afforded by television’s highest-rated live event to preview what’s to come in multiplexes over the next few months.
This year’s lineup of trailers included Ryan Gosling’s space odyssey, Project Hail Mary; Jon Favreau’s big-screen Star Wars series finale, The Mandalorian and Grogu; Steven Spielberg’s return to science fiction, Disclosure Day; and a surprise first look at David Fincher’s The Adventures of Cliff Booth. While those would-be blockbuster titles are competing for moviegoers’ box-office dollars first and foremost, studios will also likely be eyeing awards campaigns for the A-list cast and crew closer to the fall.
With that in mind, Gold Derby ranked all of the Super Bowl LX movie trailer premieres by their awards potential.
1. The Adventures of Cliff Booth (summer)
Remember when Netflix broke the internet by making The Cloverfield Paradox available for streaming directly after Super Bowl LII? Let’s just say we kinda wish history would have repeated itself with The Adventures of Cliff Booth, David Fincher’s highly anticipated sequel to Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood featuring Brad Pitt back behind the wheel in the role that netted him his first-career acting Oscar. Even though we’re ready to watch Fincher and Pitt’s first collaboration in nearly two decades right the heck now, the minute-long Big Game spot does suggest this will be a experience worth savoring on the big screen. Tarantino’s film scored a whopping 10 Oscar nods, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Actor for Leonardo DiCaprio — who played Cliff Booth’s friend and former employer, Rick Dalton. With an era switch from the 1960s to the 1970s and a cast that includes Elizabeth Debicki, Carla Gugino, and Peter Weller, expect Cliff Booth’s solo adventure to make inroads at the Oscars as well.
2. Disclosure Day (June 12)
Steven Spielberg famously missed out on a Best Director nomination for 1975’s Jaws, but Academy voters rectified that snub two years later when the filmmaker received the first of nine career directing nods for his first science-fiction film, 1977’s seminal Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Flash-forward five decades and the filmmaker could add lucky No. 10 to his collection for his long-awaited return to the genre. Written by Spielberg’s Jurassic Park collaborator David Koepp, Disclosure Day is clearly going to be action-packed, while also making room for pronounced themes of government conspiracies and media misinformation that speak directly to the current times. It should be noted that Spieberg’s awards track record for sci-fi projects has been spotty in recent years. Both Close Encounters and E.T. received Best Director nominations and the latter also received a Best Picture nod, but the 21st century trio of Minority Report, War of the Worlds, and Ready Player One failed to make an impact outside of below-the-line categories like Best Sound and Best Visual Effects. But we’ll disclose that we’re rooting for Disclosure Day day to be a worthy successor to Close Encounters as that movie approaches the big 5-0.
2. Project Hail Mary (March 20)
The last time Ryan Gosling went to outer space as NASA’s First Man, he returned from Planet Oscar with four nominations — including Best Production Design, Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing and Best Visual Effects, the latter of which he won. Don’t be surprised when Project Hail Mary, the actor’s return trip to the final frontier, repeats nominations in each of those categories at the 2027 Oscars… and maybe adds a few other categories besides. Directed by Phil Lord and Chris Miller, Project Hail Mary is based on a book by Andy Weir, whose 2011 book, The Martian, was made into a Best Picture-nominated 2015 film starring Matt Damon. Amazon MGM is overseeing this particular space odyssey, and they’ve got the deep pockets to mount a serious awards run depending on the movie’s critical and commercial reception.
After a series of emotionally weightier productions like Elio and Inside Out 2, Pixar appears to be bringing the funny back with Hoppers, set in a world where humans can port their minds over into robotically engineered animal bodies. The Big Game spot leans especially heavy on the furry humor, indicating that the studio wants to remind family audiences they can do slapstick and general zaniness just as well as a certain crew of Minions. As evidenced by Elio’s Best Animated Feature nomination — which was something of a surprise given its muted critical and commercial reception — Oscar voters are generally willing to save a spot for Pixar. But with Toy Story 5 also on deck this year, Hoppers may just have to content itself with hopping to the top of the March box office.
4. Minions & Monsters (July 1)
The Minions and their pal Gru have long since replaced Will Smith as the collective King of the Fourth of July holiday. And Minions & Monsters looks to provide family audiences with more of the same of what they love about these lil’ yellow mischief makers with plenty of sight gags and fart jokes. This time around, the Minions have to recruit a kaiju cast to realize their Hollywood dreams and the meta in-jokes about filmmaking may play well with Oscar voters. Still, it’s worth noting that thee Minions spin-offs have never scored Best Animated Feature nods, with only the second and third Despicable Me films representing Illumination’s flagship franchise in that category. Maybe monsters are the missing ingredient…
5. The Mandalorian and Grogu (May 22)
When is a Star Wars sequel also a series finale? When that sequel is The Mandalorian and Grogu, which finishes off the three-season Disney+ series and fills in the time gap between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens. Director Jon Favreau opted to avoid filling in any fresh gaps in our knowledge of the film’s plot, instead using his 37-seconds of Super Bowl airtime to spoof Big Game commercials, complete with Sam Elliot’s regal voice serving as narrator. In its TV incarnation, The Mandalorian famously scored a 2021 Best Drama Series nomination for its first season — the first “best in show” nomination the franchise had received since the original Star Wars landed a Best Picture nod in 1978. While it’s highly unlikely that The Mandalorian and Grogu will break that long, long streak, Baby Yoda is absolutely coming for that Best VFX statuette.
Technically a Puppy Bowl — and not a Super Bowl — exclusive, the new Supergirl teaser has us rooting for Team Krypto all over again. The scene-stealing canine star of James Gunn’s Superman nabs the spotlight in this 45-second clip, which depicts the first time he crosses paths with the Woman of Tomorrow. We’re also treated to a short look at life on Kyrpton before the explosion that sent Kara Zor-El (Milly Alcock) and her cousin, Kal El (David Corenswet), to Earth. “Krypton didn’t die in a day,” Supergirl says, ominously. “The gods are not that kind.” Oscar voters sadly weren’t kind to Superman as the film missed out on VFX and Original Score nominations. Maybe Kara will be the one to break the new DC Universe’s glass ceiling.
The Super Mario sequel continues to power up with fresh game-centric Easter eggs and in-jokes in every new teaser. The Super Bowl spot, for example, gives Nintendo fans the chance to see Yoshi’s famous chomp-’em-up-and-spit-’em-out (as an egg) move that dates back to Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island rendered in glorious 3D animation. There’s also a little more of Benny Safdie’s Bowser Jr., and another quick shot of Brie Larson’s Rosalina. Of course, none of this is likely to convince the same Oscar voters who shunned the previous film to cast their ballots for the sequel. But it will make multiple generations of gamers say, “Lets-a go!”
And the Oscar for “Most Unkillable Franchise” goes to… the seventh Scream picture. Released three decades after Ghostface’s first appearance, Scream 7 finds franchise mastermind Kevin Williamson, stepping into the director’s chair for the second time after 2011’s Scream 4 and bringing the series’s O.G. final girl Neve Campbell along for the ride. Their reunion follows a big swerve away from the original plans for Scream 7, which would have concluded the story of Carpenter siblings, Sam and Tara, played by Melissa Barrera and Jenna Ortega in the hit fifth and sixth installments. (That version fell apart after Barrera was dropped from the film, with Ortega and director Christopher Landon subsequently stepping away.) Scream has never been an Oscar-friendly franchise, but it is a staple at the MTV Movie Awards and the genre-focused Saturn Awards. Let’s see if Campbell can repeat her Best Actress win at the Saturns 30 years later.