The 98th Academy Awards ended Sunday night with One Battle After Another taking home six Oscars, including Best Picture. Michael B. Jordan won Best Actor for Sinners. Jessie Buckley won Best Actress for Hamnet. But three days later, those wins aren’t what people are still discussing.
The conversations that have emerged since the ceremony center on what didn’t happen. Timothée Chalamet’s loss after his controversial comments about ballet and opera went viral. Marty Supreme getting shut out despite nine nominations. Nigeria’s continued struggles to land an Oscar submission that reaches the nomination stage. These are the stories still circulating across social media and industry circles.
Chalamet entered Oscar night as a contender after strong performances throughout awards season. Then Michael B. Jordan won. Chalamet’s ballet and opera comments, made during a CNN and Variety town hall in February at the University of Texas had sparked backlash across the arts community in the days leading up to the ceremony.
“I don’t want to be working in ballet or opera where it’s like, ‘Hey, keep this thing alive,’ even though it’s like, no one cares about this anymore,” Chalamet said during the event with Matthew McConaughey. He immediately tried to walk it back. “All respect to the ballet and opera people out there. Damn, I just took shots for no reason.”
The comments resurfaced as voting closed, drawing responses from ballet legend Misty Copeland and major opera companies worldwide. The Metropolitan Opera posted a production montage captioned “This one’s for you, @tchalamet.” The Seattle Opera launched a limited-time discount code: “TIMOTHEE,” offering 14% off tickets.
Host Conan O’Brien referenced the controversy in his opening monologue. “Security is extremely tight tonight, I’ve just got to mention that. I’m told there’s concerns about attacks from both the opera and ballet communities,” he said. The camera then panned to Chalamet and his girlfriend, Kylie Jenner, seated in the audience.
When Sinners performed during the ceremony, Copeland danced on stage, directly in front of where Chalamet sat. Alexandre Singh, director of Live-Action Short winner Two People Exchanging Saliva, also mentioned the situation during his acceptance speech, saying art can change society “through theater and ballet… and also cinema.”
Academy voting for the 98th Oscars closed March 5. The clip went viral mostly after that deadline, meaning voters had already submitted their choices before the full backlash hit. Still, the timing created a narrative that Chalamet’s comments cost him the Oscar, whether that’s factually accurate or not.
Marty Supreme, Josh Safdie’s sports film, went home empty despite nine nominations. The shutout came as a surprise to many who had watched Chalamet’s strong awards season performance. The film was nominated in major categories including Best Picture and Best Actor.
Jessie Buckley won Best Actress for Hamnet, becoming the first Irish woman to win the prize. Her victory came after a dominant awards season run. Buckley dedicated her win to “the beautiful chaos of a mother’s heart” on Mother’s Day in the UK.
Amy Madigan took Best Supporting Actress for Weapons, while Sean Penn won Best Supporting Actor for One Battle After Another, earning his third acting Oscar. Penn notably skipped the ceremony and arrived in Kyiv the next day to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
The animated feature category saw KPop Demon Hunters win against expected frontrunners. The film also took Best Original Song for “Golden.” Songwriter Diane Warren, nominated 17 times without a win, set a new record for most nominations without an Oscar victory.
Sentimental Value became the first Norwegian submission to win Best International Feature Film The Singers and Two People Exchanging Saliva tied for Best Live Action Short Film, marking the seventh tie in Oscar history and the first since 2013.
The ceremony also marked the debut of Best Casting, the first new Oscar category since Best Animated Feature in 2001. Cassandra Kulukundis won the inaugural award for One Battle After Another.
For Nigeria, the Oscar conversation continues to center on absence. The Nigerian Official Selection Committee did not submit a film for the 98th Academy Awards. Nigeria has submitted only three films since beginning participation in 2019. None has been nominated.
Lionheart, Genevieve Nnaji’s 2019 directorial debut, was Nigeria’s first submission.It was disqualified for having too much English dialogue. The Academy requires that more than half of a submitted film’s dialogue be in a language other than English.
In 2022, the committee received three Yoruba-language submissions: Aníkúlápó, Elesin Oba, The King’s Horseman, and King of Thieves. The selection committee voted that all three were “non-eligible” and submitted nothing that year.
Nigeria selected Mai Martaba, an epic Hausa-language film, for the 97th Academy Awards. The film did not advance to the nomination stage. Critics cited lack of campaign budget. Films submitted in the International Feature category typically need advertising or elevation on platforms where Oscar voters might see them.
The structural challenges facing Nollywood’s Oscar aspirations go beyond language requirements. Film industries like South Korea’s have had decades to mature, secure state backing, and develop co-production structures that navigate Academy rules. Nollywood operates without comparable institutional support or infrastructure.
Egypt, Morocco, Senegal, South Africa, and Tunisia all confirmed entries for the 98th Academy Awards. Nigeria did not. The Nigerian Official Selection Committee opened submissions for the 99th Academy Awards in August 2025, with a deadline of September 12. Eligible films must have at least 50 percent dialogue in a language other than English. Nigerian Pidgin is acceptable.
Whether an Oscar nomination will eventually come remains unclear. What is clear is that the barriers, linguistic and structural, persist. Meanwhile, conversations about who should have won and who got snubbed continue to dominate post-Oscar discourse three days after the ceremony ended.
The Academy Awards may have crowned its winners Sunday night. The real winners and losers are still being decided in the days after, as audiences debate what the results mean and what they reveal about who gets recognized and why.
The 98th Academy Awards took place March 15, 2026, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.