The 96th annual Academy Awards are scheduled to take place at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, Los Angeles, on March 10 (7 PM EDT). However, owing to the time difference, it will start around 4:30 am in India on Monday, March 11. Jimmy Kimmel is hosting the show.  While sharing what can be expected this year, Kimmel said the show will be about movies and entertainment rather than social issues or politics. "I don't rule it out completely, but it's not necessarily what the show's about, and it's not like I don't have an outlet to do that five other nights a week," he said. "So it has to be a joke that I can't resist for me to use it on the Oscars," he told Deadline. Oscars 2024: Take a Look Inside $178,000 Worth Goodie Bag for All 96th Academy Awards Nominees!

Oppenheimer has the most nominations - 13. Next, with 11 nominations, is Poor Things. Ten categories are open for consideration for Killers of the Flower Moon. Barbie, the winner of this year's box office, is nominated for eight awards, including Best Picture and Best Supporting Actress. Big names like Jodie Foster, Emma Stone, Ryan Gosling, Robert De Niro, Bradley Cooper, and Robert Downey Jr are among the actors nominated. There are also a lot of first-timers among them. This year's 20 acting Oscar candidates include seven persons of colour. Lily Gladstone, Danielle Brooks, Da'Vine Joy Randolph, America Ferrera, Colman Domingo, Sterling K Brown, Jeffrey Wright, and America Ferrera are all nominated for the first time. Oscars 2024 Nominations: Oppenheimer, Poor Things and Killers of the Flower Moon Lead Nominees for 96th Academy Awards - Check Complete List Here.

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According to Deadline, in the Best Actor category, it is shaping up as a real race between Oppenheimer's Cillian Murphy and Paul Giamatti for The Holdovers, but Wright, Bradley Cooper and Domingo also turned in career performances. While Cooper was snubbed in the Best Director category, his Leonard Bernstein film Maestro scored well, with a Best Picture nomination, one for Carey Mulligan for Best Actress and another for Cooper in the Best Actor and Best Original Screenplay categories for the script he wrote with Josh Singer.

Along with Justine Triet for Best Director and star Huller for Best Picture, Anatomy of a Fall also received nominations for Best Picture. Anatomy won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, where Zone and Anatomy first gained popularity. The Best Supporting Actress category also bears watching. The frontrunner is Da'Vine Joy Randolph, who grounds The Holdovers as the boarding-school cook grieving the death of her student son in Vietnam; Danielle Brooks in The Color Purple, America Ferrara in Barbie, Blunt in Oppenheimer and Nyad's Foster make this a competitive field.

Having said that, Leonardo DiCaprio's exclusion from the Best Actor category for Killers of the Flower Moon was one of the major surprises. Margot Robbie was also left out for her performance in Barbie. Oscar nominations for comedic performances like Robbie's are uncommon. She could win Best Picture as a producer on Barbie. Directors Greta Gerwig (Barbie) and Alexander Payne (The Holdovers), both former winners in the screenplay categories, who made their respective comedies work so well this year, were left out of the Best Director race. Surprisingly, the documentary Still: A Michael J Fox Movie and American Symphony was shut out in that category, reported Deadline.