For me, the early part of any Oscars season is always the most fun. Before there’s any sense of the playing field, a wide array of movies are thrown into a big, messy swirl of hype and speculation, all hoping to stay in the conversation long enough to look like contenders.
It’s this time of year, when bets are constantly placed, abandoned, and doubled-down, that we get the most surprises. Maybe a predicted heavyweight gets knocked out at a festival, and a studio must decide whether to forge ahead or pivot. Maybe a great film without distribution gets picked up and throws off everyone’s category math. Maybe, if we’re lucky, a question mark comes roaring out the gate and profoundly reshapes the race.
That’s already happened once this year, when One Battle After Another flexed on the festivals by opening right after them to the best reviews of Paul Thomas Anderson’s career. Now, after Marty Supreme‘s surprise premiere at the New York Film Festival, it looks like it’s happened again.
You might expect A24, which just saw its most expensive movie ever rock the house with more than two months to go until its Christmas Day release, to be celebrating. And they probably are. But they’re also facing a tricky predicament that might make that victory a little bittersweet.
A24’s Safdie Brothers Compeтιтion Just Took A Major Turn
Before the 2026 Best Picture race really got started, one of the clearest narratives to watch for was the Safdie Derby. Josh and Benny Safdie, brother filmmakers who had previously made their movies together, were both unveiling their first solo-projects since going their separate ways, competing in the same awards season. (Someone could make a pretty good movie out of that logline!)
In one corner, Benny Safdie’s The Smashing Machine, an MMA biopic with Dwayne Johnson stepping out of his blockbuster comfort zone. In the other, Josh Safdie’s Marty Supreme, a ping pong period piece starring Timothée Chalamet, whose last role scored him a Best Actor nomination.
Both are A24 films; at reported $50 million and $70 million budgets, both are among the studio’s biggest bets to date. Clearly, both were entering awards season as priorities.
The Smashing Machine emerged quickly as a major player. It premiered at the Venice Film Festival to a 15-minute standing ovation that had Johnson tearing up, inspiring callbacks to The Whale ovation that kicked off Brendan Fraser’s Best Actor journey. On top of earning praise for The Rock’s performance, Safdie walked away with the Silver Lion for Best Director.
That start wasn’t as H๏τ as it looked on paper, however. The reviews were positive, but with a 64 on Metacritic, they were hardly ecstatic, and the Venice prizes in general prompted plenty of head-scratching this year. Last weekend, things took a turn. The Smashing Machine opened to just $5.9 million domestic, after tracking at $20 million just three weeks earlier.
Box office success isn’t a prerequisite for Oscars contention. But in a game that relies on momentum and compelling narratives, journalists asking Dwayne Johnson about his lowest-ever box office opening instead of his acting process can’t really be a good thing. Financial struggle isn’t a winning story, and if that story proves sticky, it could tank the film’s campaign.
On Saturday, after the disappointing receipts made headlines, the news broke that the New York Film Festival was adding a surprise screening on Monday night. Rumors flew that the mystery movie was Marty Supreme, and, lo and behold, it was. I woke up this morning to rapturous reactions, from more than the standard social media hype machine.
I don’t mean to imply that A24 arranged this sudden premiere because of The Smashing Machine‘s performance – for all I know, this screening was in the works for weeks. But the timing is pure poetry. Whether intentionally or not, the studio reversed its awards season trend by leveraging one Safdie film against another.
A24 Could Be Facing A Tough Decision (That They Just Made Tougher)
Now comes the tricky part. Oscar campaigns require plenty of money and resources, such that even the major studios can only put their full weight behind a couple movies. Every year, as some films rise and others fall, once-prominent Best Picture contenders see their windows of opportunity narrow.
A24’s slates have been discussed in this way in the past. In 2023, with Past Lives and The Zone of Interest leading the way, Priscilla and The Iron Claw were blanked at the Oscars. Last year, after The Brutalist was acquired out of the festivals, Sing Sing slowed down significantly, and both Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig missed Best Actress and Actor for Babygirl and Queer, respectively.
Priscilla and Babygirl both kicked off their campaigns with Venice prizes, only to fall by the wayside. Perhaps The Smashing Machine is destined to take a similar trajectory.
But those films weren’t made by siblings of the directors that A24 ended up backing through to the end.
According to ᴅᴇᴀᴅline, The Smashing Machine is heading toward a loss of $15-20 million. Whether to pour more money into a multi-category push or scale back to focus on Johnson will be, at the end of the day, a business decision. But there are optics at play here that make this particular situation potentially more charged.
Before either film was screened, social media sought to pit the Safdies against each other, looking for one to show themselves as the superior part of their past partnership. The timing of Marty Supreme‘s premiere has further invited such comparisons. It may have been envisioned as a moment of dual triumph, but would that have been worth the risk of fanning these flames?
A24 has a reputation for being filmmaker-friendly, and their collaborators keep coming back. But as they seek to make the climb from indie darling to mini-major, the money will talk more and more loudly, and those relationships that have powered their success may be on the line. How they navigate this awards season, which they’ve simultaneously supercharged and made more awkward for themselves, could be a glimpse into where this moment of transition will lead them.
