2025 Oscars: Best Sound Predictions

Final voting is February 11-18. The 97th Oscars telecast will be broadcast on Sunday, March 2, and air live on ABC at 7 p.m. ET/ 4 p.m. PT. We update our picks throughout awards season, so keep checking IndieWire for all our 2025 Oscar predictions.

The State of the Race

The Best Sound Oscar nominees are “A Complete Unknown,” “Dune: Part Two,” “Emilia Pérez,” “Wicked”  and “The Wild Robot.” “Wicked” is the favorite in a field with two other strong musical entries (“A Complete Unknown” and “Emilia Pérez”), but “Dune: Part Two” poses a threat as well.

Jon M. Chu’s “Wicked” tells the origin story of Elphaba/the Wicked Witch (Oscar-nominated Cynthia Erivo) and Galinda/Glinda the Good Witch (Oscar-nominated Ariana Grande). The sound team was led by Simon Hayes, Nancy Nugent Title, Jack Dolman, Andy Nelson, and John Marquis. They recorded all of the solo musical performances live on-set (allowing dialogue delivery to develop naturally into song). But for the spectacular “Defying Gravity” climax, in which Elphaba flies away on her broomstick, Erivo sang while flying on wires with silent wind focused on her cape.

“A Complete Unknown,” James Mangold’s Bob Dylan biopic starring Oscar-nominated Timothée Chalamet, chronicles the folk star’s rise in New York’s West Village in 1961 to the controversial 1965 Newport Folk Festival, where he turned electric. The sound team was led by Tod A. Maitland, Donald Sylvester, Ted Caplan, Paul Massey, and David Giammarco. The many musical performances (in clubs, at the Newport Folk Festival, and in recording studios) were done primarily live on set at the insistence of Chalamet, who spent five years preparing for the part. The 22-minute Newport segment was shot from beginning to end with 20 mics.

For Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune: Part Two,” the sound team was led by Gareth John, Richard King, Ron Bartlett, and Doug Hemphill. “Dune” won the Best Sound Oscar, but the sequel was more action-driven with lots of battles on Arrakis, as well as the noise of Harkonnen crowds during the gladiator fights on Giedi Prime. Crucially, there were many sand recordings in the field and on the foley stage, the most interesting of which were low-end groans. Plus, the sandworms were much more prominent and required more movement sounds in the sequel.

‘A Complete Unknown’©Searchlight Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection

“Emilia Pérez,” the musical crime thriller from Jacques Audiard, stars Oscar-nominated Zoe Saldaña as a lawyer who assists the titular Mexican cartel leader (Oscar-nominated Karla Sofía Gascón) in undergoing gender confirmation surgery. The sound team was led by Erwan Kerzanet, Aymeric Devoldère, Maxence Dussère, Cyril Holtz, and Niels Barletta. Shot on stages in Paris to emulate Mexico City, the director audaciously offers an operatic fever dream about the hope of a new life through song and dance. The musical sequences were live and pre-recorded and flowed naturally from dialogue to song. One of the highlights is “El Alegato,” Saldaña’s opening protest number in the marketplace.

“The Wild Robot” (DreamWorks/Universal), directed by Chris Sanders, is an animated sci-fi adventure that finds robot Roz (Lupita Nyong’o) washed ashore on an uninhabited island, who must adapt and live among the animals. The sound team was led by Randy Thom, Brian Chumney, Gary A. Rizzo, and Leff Lefferts. They recorded the organic sounds of Roz and the island (including a snowstorm), as well as the battle with Roz’s company.

Nominees are listed below in order of likelihood they will win.

Contenders

“Wicked”
“A Complete Unknown”
“Dune: Part Two”
“Emilia Pérez”
“The Wild Robot”