What will be nominated for Oscars? What won't be?

When it comes to the Oscar nominations, which will be announced Tuesday, I would advise you to expect the unexpected: This is an unusually fluid awards season, and most of the top categories still feel up for grabs.

Well, all the top categories except for the supporting actor race. But who won’t be excited to watch the Everything Everywhere All at Once star Ke Huy Quan win that one in a walk?

Still, as your Projectionist, it’s my job to at least give you a hint of the unexpected, so with that in mind, here are my projections for the nominations in the top six Oscar categories, gleaned from industry chatter, the televised boosts offered by the Golden Globes and Critics Choice Awards, and the recent nominations from the Screen Actors Guild, Producers Guild of America and Directors Guild of America.

BEST PICTURE

Three films have been nominated by the producers, directors and actors guilds — Everything Everywhere All at Once, The Fabelmans, and The Banshees of Inisherin — and each has won a televised award for best film, too. Those are your front-runners in a category that recently expanded to 10 guaranteed slots, followed closely by Tá, the intellectual favourite, and Top Gun: Maverick the popcorn pick.

The next two slots should go to two box-office success stories: Elvis, the rare adult drama to make a killing last year, and Avatar: The Way of Water, which has put up eye-popping numbers all through the Oscar-voting period and is poised to pass $2 billion worldwide.

What about another huge sequel, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, which made the producers’ lineup, and the epic-scaled RRR and The Woman King, both of which that guild snubbed? ABC executives would be thrilled if the telecast could tout those crowd-pleasers, but the expanded best picture lineup has never been dominated by so many action-driven blockbusters. (And I’d have more faith in Wakanda Forever if the Screen Actors Guild, which gave the first Black Panther its top film prize, had nominated this sequel in the same category.)

The best actor winner almost always hails from a film nominated for best picture, so if you think a resurgent Brendan Fraser could go all the way this year, then expect a nod here for The Whale, which cast him in a transformative role as a 600-pound recluse. Although Netflix has been pushing Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, it’s the streamer’s German-language All Quiet on the Western Front that most resonate with the voters I’ve spoken to.

There’s still a shot that the Sarah Polley-directed Women Talking, which received a SAG ensemble nomination, or British fave Aftersun could show up here. But I’m predicting the final slot goes to class-warfare comedy Triangle of Sadness, which won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, just as another social satire, Parasite, did four years ago.

BEST DIRECTOR

Last year, four of the five people nominated by the Directors Guild also went on to receive an Oscar nomination, and I expect that crystal ball to prove just as predictive this time around. The safest contenders appear to be Steven Spielberg, whose ninth Oscar nomination would tie him with Martin Scorsese for the second-most best director nominations ever, behind William Wyler’s 13, Todd Field for Tár, and Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan, who directed Everything Everywhere All at Once and would be the first duo nominated in this category since Joel and Ethan Coen for 2010’s True Grit.

Martin McDonagh failed to make the best director lineup for his Oscar-winning Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, a reminder that dialogue-driven comedies aren’t always showy enough for this branch. Still, I expect that his new film, The Banshees of Inisherin, in which the conversations are punctuated by some stunning scenery, will finally earn him entry into this race.

I’d be a bit surprised if the fifth DGA pick, Top Gun: Maverick director Joseph Kosinski, makes it in: The film is well made, but it lacks an auteurist stamp. Avatar: The Way of Water could only have been directed by James Cameron, but voters will probably wait until his franchise concludes to honour him. And though there are worthy women who ought to be contenders in this category — among them Gina Prince-Bythewood (The Woman King), Polley (Women Talking) and Charlotte Wells (Aftersun) — their films aren’t assured of making the best picture lineup.

There could be a surprise from the international film community here, as this branch has recently sprung for the likes of Ryusuke Hamaguchi and Thomas Vinterberg. But I’m betting on a big name, Australian auteur Baz Luhrmann (Elvis), who has embraced the awards-season campaign trail with zeal.

BEST ACTOR

This front-loaded race boasts four contenders who pull from some of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ most favoured archetypes. You’ve got a makeup-aided comeback performance (Fraser in The Whale), a movie star proving there’s more to him than people might have suspected (Colin Farrell in Banshees), a singing, strutting biopic performer (Austin Butler in Elvis) and a well-regarded but oft-overlooked veteran (Bill Nighy in Living).

After that, there are no guarantees. Though Top Gun: Maverick will rack up mentions in other categories, when academy voters consider nominating a Tom Cruise performance, they want to see him stretch. Other big stars in contention all have significant drawbacks: Hugh Jackman (The Son) leads a film that was critically savaged, Tom Hanks scored a heartland hit (A Man Called Otto) that coastal voters aren’t watching, and Will Smith (Emancipation) … well, you know.

Occasionally, you’ll see someone in the best actor category whose film doesn’t factor into any other race, but that party crasher is usually a well-respected veteran — a Denzel, a Willem, a Viggo — and not Adam Sandler, whose SAG nomination for basketball drama Hustle, may be all he can muster. So I’m projecting that our fifth nominee will be Paul Mescal, whose acclaimed Aftersun is at least in best picture contention and whose rising-star trajectory (after his breakthrough in the limited series Normal People) is something the academy will be keen to get in on.

BEST ACTRESS

The duel between Tár star Cate Blanchett and Everything Everywhere actress Michelle Yeoh will almost certainly be Oscar night’s most suspenseful contest. But in the meantime, who will keep the two of them company in this category?

Like Blanchett and Yeoh, Viola Davis of The Woman King was nominated by the Screen Actors Guild, the Golden Globes and the Critics Choice Awards, so she should have a safe berth here. The other two slots are harder to call. Ana de Armas managed a SAG nomination for playing Marilyn Monroe in Blonde, but the movie is polarising. And as Oscar voting began, a raft of famous names suddenly took to social media to tout Andrea Riseborough’s performance as a struggling alcoholic in To Leslie, though it’s unclear whether that grassroots campaign will move the underseen indie to the front of voters’ queues.