The top honor of the 2024 Oscars went to Oppenheimer, which was awarded Best Picture at the Sunday, March 10, ceremony.
The film took home the final trophy of the night as the awards show at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles wrapped up. The award, which was presented by Al Pacino, marked Oppenheimer’s seventh Oscar win on Sunday.
“I think any of us who make movies know that you kind of dream of this moment, you know you do right? I could deny it but I have been dreaming about this moment for so long,” Christopher Nolan’s wife, producer Emma Thomas, said during the acceptance speech. “But it seemed so unlikely that or whatever actually happened. And now I’m standing here and everything’s kind of gone out of my head.”
After giving praise to her husband, she added that the “team was just incredible on this movie.”
Oppenheimer competed against nine other movies in the category: American Fiction, Anatomy of a Fall, Barbie, The Holdovers, Killers of the Flower Moon, Maestro, Past Lives, Poor Things and The Zone of Interest.
Before the Oscars got underway, Oppenheimer became an awards season darling, winning Best Motion Picture – Drama at the 2024 Golden Globe Awards in January and Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture at the 2024 Screen Actors Guild Awards in February. Poor Things, meanwhile, earned Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy at the Golden Globes.
Oppenheimer’s cast and crew have also received numerous accolades for their work on the film. Cillian Murphy and Robert Downey Jr. both won Golden Globe and SAG awards for their lead and supporting roles, respectively. Elsewhere at the Golden Globes, Nolan received Best Director – Motion Picture, and Ludwig Göransson took home Best Original Score – Motion Picture.
The Best Picture nominees racked up a slew of nominations in other Oscars categories. Oppenheimer’s nods included Murphy for Best Actor in a Leading Role, Downey Jr. for Best Actor in a Supporting Role, Emily Blunt for Best Actress in a Supporting Role, Nolan for Best Director, Best Original Score, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Production Design, Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, Best Film Editing, Best Makeup and Hairstyling and Best Sound.
The remaining nominees had a total of 48 additional nods among them — Poor Things with 10, Killers of the Flower Moon with nine, Barbie with seven, Maestro with six, American Fiction, The Holdovers and The Zone of Interest with four each, Anatomy of a Fall with three and Past Lives with one.
In recent years, several films have made Oscars history with their Best Picture victories. Moonlight — which was infamously mixed up with La La Land as the Best Picture winner in 2017 — was the first film with an entirely Black cast to earn the accolade, while Parasite was the first foreign-language film to win the category in 2020, with director Bong Joon-ho and producer Kwak Sin-ae becoming the first Asian individuals to take home the award.
