98th Academy Awards · Oscars 2026
The Revolutionaries Win: One Battle After Another Conquers the Oscars 2026
Paul Thomas Anderson’s 30-year Oscar drought ends in the most emphatic way imaginable — but the vampires of Sinners weren’t going down without a fight.
On the night of March 15, 2026, inside the gilded halls of the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles, Hollywood’s biggest evening made history twice over. A decades-long injustice was corrected, and a genre film smashed through the Academy’s old barriers — and somehow, both stories felt equally earned.
6 Wins — One Battle | 13 Noms — One Battle | 4 Wins — Sinners | 16 Noms — Sinners |
The Main Event
Anderson’s Long Road to Gold
For nearly three decades, Paul Thomas Anderson had been Hollywood’s most celebrated also-ran at the Oscars. The director behind Boogie Nights, There Will Be Blood, and Phantom Thread had accumulated eleven prior nominations without a single win. On Sunday night, all of that changed.
One Battle After Another, Anderson’s sprawling political thriller adapted from Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland, claimed six Oscars from 13 nominations — including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay.
By his final speech, cradling the Best Picture statuette, Anderson confessed: “I really blew it when I won the Best Director award and forgot to thank my cast. What a night. Let’s have a martini.”
“In 1975, the Oscar nominees for Best Picture were Dog Day Afternoon, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Jaws, Nashville and Barry Lyndon. There is no best among them. There is just what the mood might be that day.” — Paul Thomas Anderson, accepting Best Picture |
The Full Scorecard
Every Win, Explained
| Film | Award | Winner / Notes |
|---|---|---|
| One Battle After Another | Best Picture | PTA, Sara Murphy, Adam Somner |
| Sinners | Best Actor | Michael B. Jordan |
| One Battle After Another | Best Director | Paul Thomas Anderson — first ever win |
| Sinners | Best Original Screenplay | Ryan Coogler |
| One Battle After Another | Best Adapted Screenplay | PTA (Pynchon’s Vineland) |
| Sinners | Best Cinematography | Autumn Durald Arkapaw — historic first for a woman |
| One Battle After Another | Best Supporting Actor | Sean Penn |
| One Battle After Another | Best Film Editing | Andy Jurgensen |
| One Battle After Another | Best Casting | Cassandra Kulukundis — inaugural award |
| Sinners | Best Original Song | “I Lied to You” |
The Breakthrough Performance
Michael B. Jordan Makes Horror History
Playing twin brothers in Ryan Coogler’s vampire-blues hybrid Sinners, Jordan delivered what many critics declared a once-in-a-decade dual performance. He became only the second actor after Joaquin Phoenix in Joker to win Best Actor for a genre film in modern times.
Jordan has appeared in every Coogler film since Fruitvale Station in 2013 — spanning Creed, Black Panther, and now Sinners. Their chemistry before the camera is inseparable from the achievement behind it.
“It’s a great win for an actor who has been beloved at least since The Wire almost 25 years ago, who’s been doing rich and varied work ever since.” — NPR critic Linda Holmes |
The Night That Broke Records
Beneath the headline battles, Sunday’s ceremony was studded with quiet but seismic milestones. In the Best Cinematography category, Autumn Durald Arkapaw became the first woman ever to win the award, besting established veterans including Darius Khondji for Marty Supreme and Dan Laustsen for Frankenstein — and doing so on her very first nomination.
On the musical front, the K-Pop animated film KPop Demon Hunters made history when its song “Golden” became the first K-Pop tune to win the Academy Award for Best Original Song.
The Bigger Picture
What These Oscars Mean for Hollywood
The 98th Academy Awards posed a question Hollywood has been reluctant to ask: can a genre film — a vampire movie rooted in blues music — genuinely compete at the highest level? Sinners’ four Oscars answer with a resounding yes.
One Battle After Another had already crossed $200 million at the global box office before Sunday night. With six Oscars now attached, that number is only heading upward. For a film built around ex-revolutionaries and stoned paranoia, that’s some kind of miracle.
#Oscars2026
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Reported by the NewsRum Editorial Desk · March 18, 2026