‘The Shape of Water’ Makes a Splash With 13 Oscar Nominations

The 2018 Oscar nominations are in, and The Shape of Water is leading the race by more than a head.

Guillermo del Toro’s romantic fantasy earned 13 nominations, including Best Picture, directing, original screenplay and acting recognition for Sally Hawkins, Richard Jenkins and Octavia Spencer. Dunkirk followed with eight nominations, while Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri received seven.

Darkest Hour and Phantom Thread collected six nominations each. Get Out and Lady Bird earned five apiece, including Best Picture and directing nominations for Jordan Peele and Greta Gerwig.

The Best Picture field features war, romance, horror, political history, family conflict and one extremely unusual relationship involving a government laboratory. In other words, the Academy has once again found several different ways to make a trip to the movies emotionally complicated.

Here is a look at the nominees in several of the ceremony’s biggest categories.

Best Picture

Call Me by Your Name
Producers Peter Spears, Luca Guadagnino, Emilie Georges and Marco Morabito

Darkest Hour
Producers Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Lisa Bruce, Anthony McCarten and Douglas Urbanski

Dunkirk
Producers Emma Thomas and Christopher Nolan

Get Out
Producers Sean McKittrick, Jason Blum, Edward H. Hamm Jr. and Jordan Peele

Lady Bird
Producers Scott Rudin, Eli Bush and Evelyn O’Neill

Phantom Thread
Producers JoAnne Sellar, Paul Thomas Anderson, Megan Ellison and Daniel Lupi

The Post
Producers Amy Pascal, Steven Spielberg and Kristie Macosko Krieger

The Shape of Water
Producers Guillermo del Toro and J. Miles Dale

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
Producers Graham Broadbent, Pete Czernin and Martin McDonagh

Actor in a Leading Role

The leading actor category includes Timothée Chalamet’s breakout performance in Call Me by Your Name, Daniel Kaluuya’s increasingly uncomfortable weekend in Get Out and Gary Oldman beneath enough prosthetic makeup to make Winston Churchill appear to be playing himself.

Timothée Chalamet
Call Me by Your Name

Daniel Day-Lewis
Phantom Thread

Daniel Kaluuya
Get Out

Gary Oldman
Darkest Hour

Denzel Washington
Roman J. Israel, Esq.

Actress in a Leading Role

The leading actress nominees include Sally Hawkins, Frances McDormand, Margot Robbie, Saoirse Ronan and Meryl Streep. Their characters face secret government experiments, public grief, Olympic ambition, difficult mothers and the considerably less forgiving demands of newspaper publishing.

Sally Hawkins
The Shape of Water

Frances McDormand
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Margot Robbie
I, Tonya

Saoirse Ronan
Lady Bird

Meryl Streep
The Post

Actor in a Supporting Role

The supporting actor race includes two performances from Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, with Woody Harrelson and Sam Rockwell both receiving nominations. Christopher Plummer also earned recognition for stepping into All the Money in the World late in production and apparently wasting no time getting awards-season ready.

Willem Dafoe
The Florida Project

Woody Harrelson
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Richard Jenkins
The Shape of Water

Christopher Plummer
All the Money in the World

Sam Rockwell
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Actress in a Supporting Role

Mary J. Blige received her first acting nomination for Mudbound and also earned a nomination for co-writing the film’s original song “Mighty River.” She is joined by Allison Janney, Lesley Manville, Laurie Metcalf and Octavia Spencer.

Mary J. Blige
Mudbound

Allison Janney
I, Tonya

Lesley Manville
Phantom Thread

Laurie Metcalf
Lady Bird

Octavia Spencer
The Shape of Water

Animated Feature Film

The animated feature nominees include stories about family, artistic ambition, bullfighting and an infant executive whose business attire remains far more professional than anything found in the average office.

The Boss Baby
Tom McGrath and Ramsey Naito

The Breadwinner
Nora Twomey and Anthony Leo

Coco
Lee Unkrich and Darla K. Anderson

Ferdinand
Carlos Saldanha and Lori Forte

Loving Vincent
Dorota Kobiela, Hugh Welchman and Ivan Mactaggart

The 90th Academy Awards will be held March 4 at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood and broadcast live on ABC. Jimmy Kimmel will host the ceremony for the second consecutive year.