As if the early Oscars race wasn’t competitive enough already, Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water just picked up some momentum, leading all films with 14 nominations for the 2018 Critics’ Choice Awards, which unveiled its nominees Wednesday. The Shape of Water is joined in the Best Picture race by The Big Sick, Call Me by Your Name, Darkest Hour, Dunkirk, The Florida Project, Get Out, Lady Bird, The Post, and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.
The Shape of Water star Sally Hawkins was also nominated for Best Actress. After being named Best Actress this past weekend by the L.A. Film Critics Association, Hawkins should be considered an Oscar front-runner alongside Frances McDormand (Three Billboards) and New York Film Critics Circle winner Saoirse Ronan (Lady Bird). The Critics’ Best Actor category, meanwhile, is headlined by Call Me by Your Name’s Timothée Chalamet, who has already won the respective LAFCA and NYFCC awards. Though he would be the youngest to ever win the Academy Award for Best Actor, Chalamet certainly seems to have more momentum heading into the Oscars than seasoned vets like Tom Hanks (The Post) and Daniel Day-Lewis (Phantom Thread).
On the TV side of the Critics’ Choice Awards, the field is a bit more even. Ryan Murphy’s Feud: Bette and Joan, the first installment of FX’s new anthology series, led the pack with six nominations, while HBO’s Big Little Lies and FX’s Fargo both picked up five nominations. Joining Feud, Big Little Lies, and Fargo in the Best Limited Series category are Netflix’s Godless and American Vandal (seriously, the dick show!) and National Geographic’s The Long Road Home.
The Best Drama Series race should be tight. Emmys winner The Handmaid’s Tale will have to compete with Game of Thrones, which wasn’t eligible for this year’s Emmys. They’re joined by Starz’s American Gods, Netflix originals The Crown and Stranger Things, and NBC’s human tears generator This Is Us. Meanwhile, the Best Comedy Series race is inherently flawed because it somehow excluded NBC’s existential afterlife comedy The Good Place, though thankfully, both Ted Danson and Kristen Bell were nominated for Best Actor and Best Actress in a Comedy Series, respectively. Instead, the comedy-series race features ABC’s Black-ish and Modern Family, Amazon’s Patriot and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, CBS’s The Big Bang Theory, and Netflix’s GLOW.
You can check out the full list of Critics’ Choice Award nominees here. The winners will be announced live on January 11 at 8 p.m. ET on the CW.
Disclosure: HBO is an initial investor in The Ringer.
