30 Great Movies Rejected by the Oscars in 2026: ‘Materialists,’ ‘Die My Love,’ ‘Ann Lee,’ ‘Eddington,’ ‘Hedda,’ ‘Roofman’ and More

Danny Boyle and Alex Garland’s “28 Years Later” was named the fifth best movie of 2025 by Variety film critic Peter Debruge and should’ve at least been in awards consideration for best cinematography thanks to Anthony Dod Mantle’s audacious use of the iPhone 15 Pro Max. “The reason this movie rocked me — emotionally — is that Boyle et al clearly recognized they were telling a post-pandemic narrative for a society (ours) that had just endured a pandemic (COVID-19), building in an opportunity to grieve and process what we’ve collectively been through via the cathartic Bone Temple sequence,” writes Debruge.

Steven Soderbergh’s excellent thriller “Black Bag” deserved Oscar consideration for its whip-smart screenplay full of sly espionage thrills and dark marriage comedy. Michael Fassbender plays an insect-like spy bugging out as he carefully probes his peers, including his wife (Cate Blanchett, perfect as the femme fatale), to discover a traitor among the ranks. The film was named one of Variety’s best movies of 2025: “Soderbergh’s perfectly ingenious romantic thriller about two married British spies trying to outmaneuver each other is the year’s most captivating bauble.”

Sony and Crunchyroll’s “Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Infinity Castle” missed out on the best animated feature race in favor of movies like “Elio,” “Zootopia 2” and Netflix’s frontrunner “KPop Demon Hunters,” among others. But “Demon Slayer” was its own box office phenomenon with $779 million worldwide and also earned a Golden Globe nomination for animated film.

Jennifer Lawrence is an Oscars darling with four nominations under her belt and one win (best actress for “Silver Linings Playbook”), but not even some of the best reviews of her career for Lynne Ramsay’s psychodrama “Die My Love” could get her into this year’s best actress category. Lawrence gives an acclaimed performance as a new mother who spirals into madness while dealing with postpartum depression and a husband (Robert Pattinson) who can’t support her needs.

Ari Aster’s timelier-by-the-day “Eddington” is set in a small New Mexico town come undone by politics, COVID and more. Perhaps the movie hit too much of a nerve to get at least the original screenplay awards buzz it so deserved. Joaquin Phoenix, Pedro Pascal, Emma Stone and Austin Butler headline the cast. “Just when you think you’ve got ‘Eddington’ pinned down as a coherent and even conventional suspense tale, the movie wriggles out from under you and enters a terrain of stranger things,” writes Variety’s chief film critic Owen Gleiberman in his review.

A24’s black comedy “Friendship,” starring Tim Robinson and Paul Rudd, was a spring hit at the indie box office with $16 million domestically. Robinson plays a socially awkward husband whose infatuation with a charismatic new neighbor (Rudd) leads to unexpected consequences. Kate Mara and Jack Dylan Grazer also star. From Variety’s review: “While we may think, at first, that we’re watching a comedy about a sad-sack geek who’s drawn out of his shell, the film always makes sure that Craig, as inhabited by Robinson, is a notch weirder and more off-putting than we expect.”

“Candyman” and “The Marvels” director Nia DaCosta delivered a sizzling and seductive reimagining of Henrik Ibsen’s “Hedda Gabler” with a brilliant Tessa Thompson front and center as the eponymous woman who navigates a house she does not want, a marriage she feels trapped in and an ex-lover who has reappeared in her life. Thompson earned nominations from the Gotham Awards, Golden Globes and Indie Spirit Awards but was never able to break out of her dark horse status in the Oscar race for best actress. Nina Hoss would’ve also been an inspired contender for best supporting actress.

Spike Lee and Denzel Washington reunited for a fifth time with A24 and Apple’s thriller “Highest 2 Lowest,” a New York City spin on Akira Kurosawa’s kidnapping drama “High and Low.” The movie earned strong notices out of the Cannes Film Festival but never gained traction on the awards circuit. From Variety’s review: “Washington plays a music mogul who faces a series of big moral choices in a film whose sensational third act more than justifies what might have seemed an unnecessary update.”

Directed by Oliver Hermanus (“Living,” “Moffie”) and starring Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor, “The History of Sound” follows two young men, Lionel (Mescal) and David (O’Connor), in the shadows of WWI who are determined to record the lives, voices and music of Americans. As they begin to log the events, the two fall in love. Mescal’s other awards contender, “Hamnet,” scored big with Academy voters and earned nominations for best picture, director and actor Jessie Buckley.

Kathryn Bigelow’s nuclear war thriller “A House of Dynamite” seemed after its Venice Film Festival premiere like it could be one of Netflix’s biggest Oscar contenders, especially for best editing and casting given the film’s sprawling ensemble. Alas, the film gradually lost traction over the season and walked away with zero Oscar nominations. Bigelow’s “The Hurt Locker” won best picture and director honors, while “Zero Dark Thirty” earned five nominations, including best picture. Since then, the Oscars have avoided Bigelow’s follow-ups “Detroit” and “A House of Dynamite.”

There was a time after Noah Baumbach’s “Jay Kelly” world premiered at the Venice Film Festival that George Clooney and Adam Sandler seemed liked locks to land Oscar nominations for best actor and supporting actor, respectively. Alas, the two were shut out of the Academy Awards after also failing to land nominations at the Actor Awards (aka SAG Awards). Clooney riffs on his movie star persona in the film by playing a world-famous actor who has an existential crisis as he travels overseas to accept a lifetime achievement award. Sandler plays the actor’s manager, while Laura Dern stars as his publicist.

Shih-Ching Tsou’s “Left-Handed Girl” was Taiwan’s official Oscar submission but missed out on a nomination. The film was always considered a dark horse in the Oscar race compared to higher-profile festival sensations like “The Secret Agent,” “It Was Just an Accident, “Sentimental Value” and others. Co-written and edited by “Anora” Oscar winner Sean Baker, the movie follows a single mother and her two daughters as they relocate to Taipei to open a night market stall. The cast includes Janel Tsai, Nina Ye, Teng-Hui Huang and Shih-Yuan Ma.

Alex Russell’s Sundance sensation “Lurker” was named the seventh best movie of 2025 by Variety film critic Owen Gleiberman: “In this sleek and unnerving parable of the pathology of celebrity, Théodore Pellerin, as a hanger-on who will do anything to hang on, gives a performance that lays bare the reptilian underside of wide-eyed fan worship… ‘Lurker’ has been made with the craft of early vintage Polanski crossed with an up-to-the-minute awareness of what pop culture has come to mean when the famous and their fans are now chasing each other’s tails.”

“The Mastermind” follows in the footsteps of “First Cow,” “Certain Women” and “Showing Up” as the latest acclaimed Kelly Reichardt movie to be shut out of the Oscars. Her latest was named a Variety Critic’s Pick out of the Cannes Film Festival: “Josh O’Connor comes unstuck as a family man whose under-planned theft from a local art museum goes inexorably, amusingly awry… Reichardt has never met a genre she couldn’t meticulously deconstruct. But rarely has she done so with such offbeat wit and bluesy wisdom as with this anti-heist movie, a canny rejoinder to the glamorous high drama of the traditional robbery-gone-wrong plot.”

Celine Song’s directorial debut “Past Lives” was Oscar nominated for best picture and best original screenplay, but the Academy did not fall as hard for her latest “Materialists” despite its buzzy release last summer. The movie was also the rare indie to cross the $100 million mark at the worldwide box office in 2026. Headlined by Dakota Johnson, Chris Evans and Pedro Pascal, the film centers on a New York City matchmaker caught in a love triangle between her deadbeat ex-flame and a millionaire new guy. Variety gave the film a positive review, writing: “It’s a sharp and serious social romantic drama full of telling observations about the way we live now, and about how connected that is (or not) to the way we’ve always lived. And there’s a dark side to it. It’s ‘Sex and the City’ filtered through a sobering reality check.”

Bong Joon Ho made history at the Oscars when “Parasite” became the first non-English language movie to take home the best picture prize. His follow-up, “Mickey 17,” couldn’t even find traction in the best visual effects race despite its sleek futuristic setting. Based on the 2022 novel “Mickey7” by Edward Ashton, “Mickey 17” stars Robert Pattinson as an “expendable,” a clone that is sent on fatal missions colonizing an ice planet and then “reprinted” with most of his memories intact every time he dies. The supporting cast includes Mark Ruffalo, Steven Yeun, Naomi Ackie and Toni Collette.

Perhaps it’s not the best “Mission: Impossible” movie, but Tom Cruise still delivered a dazzling action spectacle with “The Final Reckoning” that deserved contention in the best original sound race at least.  Starring Cruise, Hayley Atwell, Simon Pegg and more, “The Final Reckoning” picks up in the wake of “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning,” as Ethan Hunt (Cruise) and his globetrotting team of agents continue their mission to destroy the Entity, a mysterious and all-powerful AI, before it falls into the wrong hands.

Comedies rarely get recognition from the Oscars, especially when they are as goofball as Liam Neeson’s delightfully silly “The Naked Gun” reboot. From Variety’s review: “The film is an engaging goofball grab bag, well-stocked with vintage terrible puns, nicely detonated movie conventions (in the opening heist sequence, the villain’s henchman steals a remote control marked with the words ‘P.L.O.T. Device’), and serviceable running gags (Drebin keeps getting handed oversize cups of take-out coffee).”

Park Chan-wook’s acclaimed thriller “No Other Choice” was a sensation at the Venice Film Festival and was eyed by many as being a strong contender in the best international feature face. Neon’s other contenders “The Secret Agent,” “Sirat,” “It Was Just an Accident” and “Sentimental Value” all made the cut. The fifth slot went to fellow Venice breakout “The Voice of Hind Rajab.”

Richard Linklater’s Cannes darling “Nouvelle Vague” seemed primed for Oscars after its festival debut. After all, the Academy loves movies about making movies and this one is a valentine to the creation of Jean-Luc Godard’s iconic 1959 “Breathless” and to the beginnings of the French new wave movement. Shot on 35mm film in black-and-white, the film stars Guillaume Marbeck as Jean-Luc Godard, Aubry Dullin as Jean-Paul Belmondo and Zoey Deutch as New Wave darling Jean Seberg.

Rungano Nyoni earned rave reviews for “On Becoming a Guinea Fowl.” The official synopsis reads: “On an empty road in the middle of the night, Shula stumbles across the body of her uncle. As funeral proceedings begin around them, she and her cousins bring to light the buried secrets of their middle-class Zambian family, in filmmaker Rungano Nyoni’s surreal and vibrant reckoning with the lies we tell ourselves.”

Keke Palmer and SZA’s infectious chemistry powered Sony’s comedy “One of Them Days” to critical acclaim. The duo even earned acting nominations at the Spirit Awards. Alas, the Academy never takes a comedy like this one seriously, even when it’s this well-constructed and acted. The duo star as lifelong buddies whose friendship is tested over the course of a zany day where they are forced to come up with rent money or face eviction. From Variety’s review:  “The movie is a likably bent portrait of a community whose residents revel in their energized dysfunction, which is never so cartoonish that it can’t inspire an honest laugh.”

The Oscars have mostly avoided Wes Anderson movies since the high of “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” which earned nine nominations, including best picture, and won four Oscars. Yes, Anderson’s “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar” won the Oscar for best live action short film, but his features such as “The French Dispatch” and “Asteroid City” were completely rejected by the Academy. Now added to that list is “The Phoenician Scheme,” which is headlined by “One Battle After Another” Oscar nominee Benicio del Toro. You’d think any Anderson movie would at least be a shoo-in for a best production design nomination, but that’s no longer the case.

Channing Tatum and Kirsten Dunst delivered winning performances in Derek Cianfrance’s true story drama “Roofman.” The film centers on Jeffrey Manchester, a U.S. army veteran who resorted to robbing various McDonalds in order to overcome financial hardship. He eventually gets caught and sent to jail, only to break out and go into hiding at a Toys ”R” Us. The two stars should’ve been acting contenders.

Rian Johnson’s “Knives Out” and “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery” both earned screenplay nominations, but the third time was not the charm for “Wake Up Dead Man.” This is the first “Knives Out” installment to be rejected by the Academy. Variety’s review of the threequel called it the sharpest “Knives Out’ movie yet, adding: “Its trickiness works on a human scale, as writer-director Rian Johnson immerses us in murder logistics — and, in a playful way, the question of rationality vs. faith.”

Alex Garland’s real-time combat thriller “Warfare” could not reach the box office heights of his last A24 outing, “Civil War,” but it’s a white-knuckle war movie that deserved more awards buzz for its bombastic sound and sharp editing. Featuring an ensemble cast that includes D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, Will Poulter, Cosmo Jarvis, Kit Connor, Finn Bennett, Joseph Quinn and Charles Melton, the film is based on co-director Ray Mendoza’s real experience during the Iraq War.

Eva Victor’s Sundance darling “Sorry Baby” was named by Variety as one of the best of 2025 and picked up nominations from the Gotham Awards, Golden Globes and Spirit Awards. That Victor was passed over in the original screenplay category is one of the year’s most painful Oscar snubs. Victor got a last-minute boost when Julia Roberts presented the final award at the Golden Globes the night before Oscar voting started and shouted out Victor and told viewers to watch “Sorry Baby.” Alas, no nominations in the end.

James Gunn’s “Superman” successfully launched a new DC Universe for Warner Bros with critical acclaim and strong box office. Many Oscar pundits believed the goodwill for the comic book reboot would make it a contender in at least the best visual effects race, where it was one of the shortlisted titles. But it was not to be. Fellow summer blockbuster “Jurassic World Rebirth” did end up with a nomination instead.

Amanda Seyfried earned a Golden Globe nomination for her fearless turn in “The Testament of Ann Lee,” but the Academy ultimately did not go for her or director Mona Fastvold’s audacious biographical musical on the Shakers leader in the 18th century. Fans of the film will be equally surprised to see the Academy ignore many of the dazzling craft elements, from costume design to cinematography and production design.

The first “Wicked” movie was an Oscar sensation with 10 nominations, including best picture, and two wins for best costume design and production design. The sequel, “Wicked: For Good,” shockingly earned zero nominations. Both acting contenders Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo were shut out, while neither the original songs nor any of the craft elements made the cut despite all the love for the first movie.

James Vanderbilt’s well-reviewed thriller “Nuremberg” was long-listed for six nominations at the BAFTAs but turned up empty-handed at the Oscars. Russell Crowe earned some of the best reviews of his recent career for his performance as Hermann Göring, and the film has become an indie box office hit for Sony Pictures Classics with $40 million and counting worldwide.