Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer wins Best Picture at the 2024 Academy Awards

We all predicted this, much like the man standing by the little pond with Albert Einstein reflecting on the terrifying future that he was instrumental in creating before he became powerless to stop it, Oppenheimer has won Best Picture at the 2024 Academy Awards. After a somewhat awkward presentation from Al Pacino, who seemed to relish the time onstage at least (hey, good for him), the whole assembled cast and crew of Oppenheimer finally took the stage to celebrate a hard-fought win.

This caps off a splashy night for director Christopher Nolan and his heady, emotional biopic of the man who gave the world the ability to destroy itself. The film didn’t win everything it was nominated for, but it got plenty of big ones with Robert Downey Jr. winning Best Supporting Actor, Cillian Murphy winning Best Actor, and Christopher Nolan winning Best Director.

Oppenheimer previously cleaned up at the BAFTAs, giving Christopher Nolan his first wins from the British Academy, and the film also won top honors at the Directors Guild Awards—a win that foreshadowed Nolan’s well-earned Best Director Oscar tonight. And after heroically trying to hold its own against Barbie at the box office after both films were released on the same day (though Barbie quickly outpaced its earnings), Oppenheimer became the movie of 2023 and basically had this award already in its pocket.

Not to say this was an easy win for Nolan’s film, since it had some serious competition coming from fellow nominees The Holdovers, American Fiction, The Zone Of Interest, Barbie, Poor Things, Past Lives, Anatomy Of A Fall, Maestro, and Killers Of The Flower Moon (a long list, famously because people thought The Dark Knight got snubbed in its year and The Academy decided to widen the field).