'The dog had as much on screen time': why The Odyssey isn't campaigning Zendaya for an Oscar
Universal filed the awards paperwork for the biggest movie of the year, and five of its most famous names aren't on it.
The Odyssey's Oscar submissions are set, per Gold Derby: Matt Damon alone in Best Actor as Odysseus, Anne Hathaway and Samantha Morton in supporting actress, Tom Holland, Robert Pattinson, and John Leguizamo in supporting actor. Nolan goes up for director, adapted screenplay, and picture, and the film is chasing the nomination record of 16 that Sinners set.
The list is most interesting for who isn't on it. Zendaya, Charlize Theron, Lupita Nyong'o, Elliot Page, and Jon Bernthal — names that anchored a year of posters, trailers, and a record marketing campaign — are not being campaigned in any acting category, surviving only in group submissions for ensemble prizes at the Actor Awards and Critics Choice.
Zendaya, Theron, Nyong'o, Page, Bernthal: the Oscar paperwork lists none of them.
The audience saw this coming
When the news hit r/movies, the reaction wasn't outrage at a snub. It was arithmetic from people who had seen the movie:
"I'm curious about how much actual screen time the actors who didn't get nominated had because I feel like this is totally expected? Didn't Elliot Page have like two scenes? Like the dog had as much on screen time as some of these characters."
— a commenter on r/movies
The most interesting defections came from inside the fandoms themselves, where loyalty lost to honesty:
"Zendaya barely does anything in this movie, and I'm speaking as a Zendaya fan. It would be insane for her to be nominated."
— a commenter on r/movies
Argos the dog, for the record, is a canonical Homer character with one of the poem's famous scenes, so the comparison is more literate than it looks. The pattern it describes is familiar from Nolan's whole career: Oppenheimer also sold itself on a wall of famous faces, many of whom worked a day or two. The difference is that The Odyssey put those faces at the center of the sell, and the campaign paperwork now functions as an honest accounting of who actually carries the film.
The campaign's real play
The submissions that did happen have their own calculation. Hathaway's Penelope going supporting rather than lead sidesteps a Best Actress field with Julianne Moore's The Debut at the top, and pairing her with Morton's Circe aims at a double supporting-actress nomination — with Variety noting that a Hathaway win would make her the first woman to take the category twice for Best Picture nominees.
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The money behind the push is historic either way. The Odyssey passed $1.677 billion worldwide by mid-September, the biggest film in Universal's history, the biggest R-rated film ever, and Nolan's biggest hit. Nominations come January 21, 2027; the ceremony is March 14. Between now and then, the people who bought tickets for Zendaya can compare notes with the people who stayed for Matt Damon.
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