There’s a peculiar kind of heartbreak reserved for films that show up to the Oscars with a fistful of nominations, dominate the conversation for months, and then walk away from Best Picture with nothing but a nice seat and a longer drive home. Awards season loves a frontrunner, right up until it doesn’t. Some of the most nominated films in Academy Awards history never took the top prize. A handful didn’t win anything at all. Here’s a look at ten movies that racked up nomination after nomination, only to watch a rival film hoist the Best Picture statuette instead.
1. La La Land (2016)
Damien Chazelle’s musical tied the all-time record with fourteen Oscar nominations, matching All About Eve and Titanic. It won six awards on the night, including Best Director for Chazelle and Best Actress for Emma Stone, and for about two surreal minutes it was announced as Best Picture too.
Then came the correction heard around the world. Moonlight was the actual winner, and the mix-up turned La La Land into the answer to a trivia question rather than the film remembered for winning the top award. It remains one of the most nominated films ever to lose Best Picture.
2. The Power of the Dog (2021)
The Power of the Dog led all nominees with twelve nominations at the 94th Academy Awards, putting it well ahead of every other contender that year. Jane Campion picked up a Best Director win, making her the second woman in Oscar history to win that category, but the film’s Best Picture hopes quietly slipped away as the ceremony went on.
CODA became the first Best Picture winner distributed via a streaming platform, and its three nominations were the fewest for any Best Picture winner since 1932’s Grand Hotel. It’s a strange footnote in Oscar history: the film with a dozen nominations lost to the film with just three, and Campion later suggested in interviews that the smaller, more emotionally direct film simply connected with voters in a way her Western did not.
3. True Grit (2010)
The Coen brothers’ remake of the classic Western earned ten Academy Award nominations, tying it for the most of any film that year alongside The King’s Speech. Jeff Bridges and Hailee Steinfeld both picked up acting nominations, and the film was praised across the board for its craftsmanship.
Despite all that recognition, True Grit went home with zero wins. The King’s Speech took Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, and Best Original Screenplay, leaving the Coens’ film as one of the more thorough Oscar shutouts in recent memory for a Best Picture nominee with double digit nods.
4. American Hustle (2013)
David O. Russell’s con artist ensemble piece landed ten nominations, including nods in all four acting categories, a rare feat that only a handful of films have ever managed. Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Bradley Cooper, and Jennifer Lawrence all competed for individual awards that year.
Yet American Hustle left the ceremony without a single win. 12 Years a Slave took Best Picture, and the acting prizes were scattered among other films, making American Hustle’s ten nominations and zero wins one of the more complete shutouts of the 2010s.
5. Gangs of New York (2002)
Martin Scorsese’s sprawling period epic earned ten nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director, marking one of his most decorated films to that point in his career. Daniel Day-Lewis’s performance as Bill the Butcher was widely considered one of the highlights of the film and the year.
Chicago ultimately took home Best Picture, and Gangs of New York walked away without a single win. This was director Martin Scorsese’s first film to go 0-10 on Oscar night, a pattern that would repeat twice more with The Irishman and Killers of the Flower Moon, making Gangs of New York the start of an unusual streak.
6. The Color Purple (1985)
Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of Alice Walker’s novel picked up eleven Oscar nominations, an enormous haul for a film in its era. Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey both received acting nominations for their performances, and the film was seen by many as a major awards contender across the board.
The Color Purple, however, won nothing on Oscar night. Out of Africa took Best Picture, and The Color Purple’s eleven nominations without a single win tied it with a small group of films for the most nominated movie in Academy history never to win anything at all.
7. The Turning Point (1977)
This ballet drama starring Shirley MacLaine and Anne Bancroft picked up eleven nominations, an extraordinary tally for a film that has largely faded from popular memory today. It competed directly against Annie Hall for the top prize that year.
Woody Allen’s Annie Hall took home Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Actress, leaving The Turning Point with nothing despite matching it nomination for nomination in total count. Along with The Color Purple, it holds the record for most Oscar nominations without a single win.
8. Roma (2018)
Alfonso Cuarón’s black and white memory piece earned ten nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, and a rare Best Foreign Language Film nod in the same year. It was widely considered the frontrunner for months leading up to the ceremony.
Roma did win three awards that night, including Best Director for Cuarón, but Best Picture went to Green Book instead, a result that sparked plenty of debate at the time. It remains one of the more discussed Best Picture losses of the past decade precisely because Roma had seemed so close to a clean sweep.
9. Killers of the Flower Moon (2023)
Killers of the Flower Moon, a historical crime drama about a vast conspiracy to rob the Osage Nation of its oil wealth, received 10 nominations at the 96th Academy Awards. That total included Best Picture, Best Director for Scorsese, and Best Actress for Lily Gladstone, who became the first Native American performer nominated in that category.
This marked director Martin Scorsese’s third film to go 0-10 on Oscar night, following Gangs of New York in 2002 and The Irishman in 2019. Oppenheimer swept the ceremony that year, and Killers of the Flower Moon left with the unusual distinction of matching its own director’s history of big nomination totals followed by complete shutouts.
10. Lincoln (2012)
Steven Spielberg’s presidential biopic earned twelve Oscar nominations, tying it for the most of the year alongside Life of Pi. Daniel Day-Lewis was considered a lock for Best Actor from the moment the film premiered, and expectations for the film as a whole ran high through most of the season.
Day-Lewis did win Best Actor, but the film’s other big prize, Best Picture, went to Argo instead, a result that many at the time called one of the more notable upsets of the decade. Lincoln’s twelve nominations and single win stand as a reminder that quantity of nominations rarely guarantees the night’s biggest prize. These ten films share a common thread. Each arrived at the Academy Awards as one of the season’s most decorated contenders, and each left without the one prize that tends to define how a year in film is remembered. Nomination totals make headlines in January, but the Best Picture envelope in March writes its own history, often against the odds that the nominations alone seemed to suggest.
