Best picture announced as rising hopes dashed for Adelaide’s Oscars contender
The best picture and actors at the Academy Awards have been announced as Adelaide’s Rising Sun Pictures saw its hopes dimmed this morning.
Source: The Academy
One Battle After Another starring Leonardo DiCaprio has won best picture at the Academy Awards, director Paul Thomas Anderson saying “what a night, you guys, let’s have a martini”.
Anderson also won Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay while Jessie Buckley won best actress for her performance in Hamnet.
While Michael B. Jordon won best actor for playing twins in the supernatural action thriller Sinners.
An Adelaide-based visual effects company failed in its bid to win an Oscar for its work on horror movie Sinners, but its team was still glowing after seeing its work recognised on the world stage.
Rising Sun visual effects supervisor Guido Wolter and his team was nominated for Best Visual Effects for vampire horror film Sinners, the most nominated film in Oscar’s history with 16 nods.
The groundbreaking effects in the film used Revize technology, which allowed Best Actor nominee Michael B. Jordan to portray twin brothers Smoke and Stack simultaneously on the same screen.
More than half of the film’s almost two-and-a-half hour runtime consists of visual effects shots, setting a record for most VFX shots for an IMAX film.
Rising Sun Pictures executive producer Ian Cope said the team – gathered to watch the live screening of the awards at the company’s Flinders Street headquarters – was disappointed to not win the award, but “excited” to have their work “recognised on the world stage”.
“We’ve been through these ups and downs before, both for Oscars, AACTA awards and Visual Effects Society Awards,” Cope said.
“We got to a stage where one of our supervisors got nominated and our work was seen as the best in a batch this year. I think that’s something for the team to be really proud of.”
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Cope said the company has already seen “an uptick” in movie studios looking to use similar technology that was used to replicate the Sinners lead actor.
“We are one of the world’s leading visual effects vendor and it’s really pushing the boundaries of what we can do in storytelling.
“Ultimately, anything we do here to build the visual effects and the creative industries will always help the local filmmakers and film industry.”
Rising Sun team members gathered for an Oscar’s watch party to support Wolter, the visual effects and computer animation company celebrated its 30th year in 2025 after being founded by Tony Clark, Wayne Lewis, and Gail Fuller in Adelaide in 1995.
Since then, Rising Sun has provided visual effect support for some of Hollywood’s biggest blockbusters including the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings films.
It was the second time a visual effects supervisor for Rising Sun had been nominated for an Oscar following a 2014 nomination for their work on X-Men: Days of Future Past.
Conan O’Brien launched the 98th Academy Awards with Amy Madigan winning the event’s first award, best supporting actress, and KPop Demon Hunters taking the gong for best animated feature film.
O’Brien kicked off proceedings with a Sabotage-scored sprint through the nominees, dressed as Madigan’s character in Weapons, and a plea for what he called “that rarest of qualities today: optimism”.
O’Brien, hosting for the second time, alluded to “chaotic and frightening times” in his opening monologue at Los Angeles’ Dolby Theatre late on Sunday (local time).
But he argued that the geopolitical climate made the Oscars all the more resonant as a globally unifying force.
Minutes after a faux-Madigan kicked off the broadcast, the real Madigan won best supporting actress for her phenomenally creepy portrayal of Gladys in the horror thriller Weapons.
The 75-year-old actor’s win came 40 years after her first Oscar nomination, in 1986 for Twice in a Lifetime.
“This is great,” a laughing Madigan said as she hit the stage.
“Gladys has surprised me, she’s getting a lot of love back,” she said. “I didn’t know y’all wanted to hang out with her.”
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Madigan beat other nominees Teyana Taylor in One Battle After Another, Wunmi Mosaku in Sinners, and Elle Fanning and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas in Sentimental Value.
The Netflix sensation KPop Demon Hunters, 2025’s most-watched film, won best animated feature, as expected.
It was a big win for Netflix but a more qualified victory for the movie’s producer, Sony Pictures. Though it developed and produced the film, Sony sold KPop Demon Hunters to the streaming giant instead of giving it a theatrical release.
On Netflix, KPop Demon Hunters became a cultural phenomenon and the streaming platform’s biggest hit. It has more than 325 million views and counting.
“This is for Korea and Koreans everywhere,” co-director Maggie Kang said.
Earlier, nominees Jessie Buckley and Australia’s Rose Byrne led the parade of entertainment luminaries arriving for the unusually open best-picture race that pits vampire hit Sinners against the darkly comic thriller One Battle After Another.
Byrne, who’s hoping to win her first Oscar, arrived wearing a strapless black fishtail gown by Dior, with floral embroidery across the bodice and hem.
Security for the ceremony was tight as some of the biggest names in Hollywood walked a red carpet decorated with trees to evoke the feeling of a Zen garden.
Designers said they hoped the scene, which also adorned the stage, would deliver a feeling of calm in a chaotic world.
Organisers said they were working closely with the FBI and Los Angeles police after a federal warning of a possible Iranian threat against California, though authorities have cited no specific or credible danger to the Academy Awards.
The glitzy celebration, Hollywood’s most over-the-top gala of the year, takes place as the US wages war on Iran.
This year’s awards contest holds an unusually high potential for surprises.
The race for best actor is especially unpredictable, pitting Timothee Chalamet against Leonardo DiCaprio and Michael B Jordan.
Chalamet had been considered a frontrunner for his acclaimed performance as a ping-pong hustler in Marty Supreme, but his prospects seemed to dim over an awards-season campaign featuring a streetwear line and a giant blimp and remarks dismissing ballet and opera.
One Battle After Another, starring DiCaprio as a one-time political radical parenting a teenager, was seen as the frontrunner for best picture after stacking up trophy after trophy at recent ceremonies.
But Sinners, a celebration of blues music and black culture in the segregation-era US South starring Jordan, made a late surge with a win this month at the Actor Awards.
Despite almost no campaigning, Sean Penn is viewed as the best supporting actor favourite, with Australia’s Jacob Elordi also nominated in the category for his performance in Frankenstein.
Another Australian, Nick Cave, is nominated for the title song to Clint Bentley’s film Train Dreams, starring Joel Edgerton. Adelaide visual effects company Rising Sun Pictures is also nominated for its work on Sinners.
-AAP
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