Demi Moore and Ariana Grande among predicted contenders

The Oscar nominations will be announced later, in an exciting year for the film awards race where there is no consensus frontrunner for best picture.

Blockbusters such as Wicked and Dune: Part Two will compete with Emilia Pérez, Conclave, A Complete Unknown, The Brutalist and Anora when the shortlists are released at lunchtime.

The nominations were due to be announced last week, but were postponed after the voting period was extended due to the Los Angeles wildfires.

The Academy Awards ceremony, hosted by US comic Conan O’Brien, will take place on 2 March.

There are two musicals, two massive pop stars, two Sebastian Stan films, two actors from Succession and several comeback queens in the race this year.

Here are a few things to look out for when the Academy announces its nominations.

Comeback narratives are strong this year, particularly in the best actress category where many contenders have returned after years away from the awards race.

One of the frontrunners is The Substance star Demi Moore, for playing a woman who swaps her body for a younger and more beautiful version of herself.

Equally, there is a huge amount of affection towards Pamela Anderson, who has already scored surprise SAG and Golden Globe nominations for her vulnerable and powerful performance in The Last Showgirl as an ageing Las Vegas performer.

Marianne Jean-Baptiste has an outside chance at a nomination for playing a constantly miserable woman in Mike Leigh’s Hard Truths, nearly three decades after her first nomination for their previous collaboration Secrets & Lies.

Even Angelina Jolie arguably has a comeback narrative. Although she has remained in the spotlight in recent years, her portrayal of opera singer Maria Callas is her first Oscar contender for some time. She has lost momentum in recent weeks, however, after missing a nomination at other major ceremonies.

Over in the best actor category, Adrien Brody (The Brutalist) is expected to return to the race for his performance as a Hungarian architect hired by a wealthy American after World War Two. Brody was last nominated in 2003, when he won for The Pianist.

Other contenders include Timothée Chalamet (A Complete Unknown) for his portrayal as Bob Dylan in the early 1960s, and Colman Domingo (Sing Sing) for playing a prison inmate who takes part in an performing arts programme.

Possible British nominees include Ralph Fiennes (Conclave), for his role as a cardinal who oversees the selection of a new Pope, and Daniel Craig (Queer), who plays a gay man who ventures into the jungle in search of a plant with telepathic qualities.

Sebastian Stan has two possible chances for a nomination – one for playing a young Donald Trump in The Apprentice, and another for the Golden Globe-winning A Different Man, for his role as an aspiring actor who radically changes his appearance.

Two of the biggest pop stars of the last 15 years could be recognised in the best supporting actress category. Ariana Grande is a dead-cert for her performance in Wicked as Glinda, the Good Witch of the North.

Another possible (but less certain) nominee is Selena Gomez for her role in Spanish-language musical Emilia Pérez as the wife of a Mexican drug lord who changes gender.

Her co-star Zoe Saldaña is the current frontrunner to win the category. She took home the Golden Globe earlier this month and has a lot of goodwill from voters because of her roles in box office smashes such as the Avatar and Marvel films.

But it’s a crowded category, with Felicity Jones (The Brutalist), Isabella Rossellini (Conclave), Margaret Qualley (The Substance) and Jamie Lee Curtis (The Last Showgirl) also in the running.

Danielle Deadwyler (The Piano Lesson), Monica Barbaro (A Complete Unknown) and Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor (Nickel Boys) could also show up. This category is particularly hard to predict due to different actresses being nominated at different precursor events.

The frontrunner in the best supporting actor category is Kieran Culkin, who is best known for his role as the snarky Roman Roy in HBO’s Succession.

He could score a nomination for his performance in the excellent A Real Pain, about two cousins who travel across Poland in remembrance of their grandmother.

But one of Culkin’s competitors is his own Succession co-star Jeremy Strong, who could be recognised for his terrific performance in The Apprentice as lawyer Roy Cohn, who mentored Donald Trump in his early years as a real estate tycoon.

The pair could be joined in the best supporting actor category by Yura Borisov (Anora), Guy Pearce (The Brutalist), Clarence Maclin (Sing Sing), and Edward Norton (A Complete Unknown).

And what about Culkin and Strong’s on-screen sister Sarah Snook? Well, she has a film in the awards race too, although not in the acting categories. The Australian voices the main character in the beguiling animated film Memoir of a Snail.

Jolie, Moore, Anderson and Jean-Baptiste may have comeback narratives, but they are competing in a particularly crowded lead actress category this year.

Other frontrunners include Mikey Madison (Anora) for her barnstorming performance as a New York stripper who falls for the son of a wealthy Russian.

She could be joined by Cynthia Erivo (Wicked) for her role as the Wizard of Oz character Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West. The British actress is an Oscar win away from achieving EGOT status.

Golden Globe winner Fernanda Torres (I’m Still Here) could make it in for her understated portrayal of a Brazilian woman who investigates the disappearance of her congressman husband.

Karla Sofía Gascón (Emilia Pérez) is also likely to be recognised for playing a Mexican cartel leader who leaves the world of crime to live a new life as a trans woman.

Gascón would become the first trans person to be nominated in an acting category. There is one caveat – Elliot Page was nominated for Juno in 2008, but that was more than a decade before the actor transitioned.

Robbie Williams had a good chance of an Oscar nomination this year thanks to Better Man, the biopic which sees him depicted as a CGI chimpanzee.

The singer made the 15-strong shortlist in the best original song category for his track Forbidden Road, taken from the film’s soundtrack.

But sadly he will not be one of the final five nominees, after the song was disqualified for “incorporating material from an existing song that was not written” for the film.

It’s understood Forbidden Road was considered too similar to I Got A Name, performed by Jim Croce in the 1973 film The Last American Hero.

Instead, songs from The Six Triple Eight, Challengers, The Wild Robot, Blitz and two numbers from Emilia Pérez could be nominated.

Established directors such as Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino and Paul Thomas Anderson often tend to populate this category, understandably cropping up at the Oscars again and again.

This year, however, all of the major contenders for best director would be first-time Oscar nominees.

Brady Corbet (The Brutalist), Edward Berger (Conclave), Jacques Audiard (Emilia Pérez) and Sean Baker (Anora) are all likely to be recognised.

They could be joined by Coralie Fargeat (The Substance), RaMell Ross (Nickel Boys) and James Mangold (A Complete Unknown).

Even the less likely contenders, such as Jon M Chu (Wicked), Denis Villeneuve (Dune: Part Two), Mohammad Rasoulof (The Seed of the Sacred Fig) and Payal Kapadia (All We Imagine As Light), would be first-time nominees in the category.

We may not have Barbie or Oppenheimer this year, but there are plenty of other blockbusters which could show up at the Oscars.

Box office smashes in 2024 included Wicked, which almost certainly will be nominated for best picture, and Gladiator II, which almost certainly won’t be.

Other sequels which cleaned up financially include Dune: Part Two, the second instalment of the sandy sci-fi adaptation, which is likely to be nominated for best picture as well as several technical prizes.

Elsewhere, Inside Out 2, the highest-grossing film of last year, will likely make the best animated film category, alongside the popular The Wild Robot.

But box office takings aren’t everything. Both animated films could be beaten by a much smaller contender, the charming Latvian film Flow, about a cat who must work with other animals to survive after a flood, which won the Golden Globe.

Often with the Oscars, there is a clear best picture winner which steamrolls its way through awards season, such as Oppenheimer in 2024. This year, however, is wide open.

Different films have been winning prizes at the various events which precede the Oscars. There are six contenders which feasibly could take the top prize, depending on how the next few weeks shake out.

The Brutalist and Emilia Pérez won the two top film awards at the Golden Globes, and both have a lot of passionate supporters.

Meanwhile, Conclave and Anora are widely liked and less divisive than some other contenders, and could therefore benefit from the preferential ballot system, where voters rank the nominated films in order of preference.

Less likely but still possible winners include A Complete Unknown, which had a particularly strong showing at the SAG nominations, and Wicked, which is likely to be heavily nominated and is one of the most successful films financially.

Nominations will be announced at 13:30 GMT and will be streamed on the BBC News live page, as well as the Academy’s official website and social channels.

The event has been scaled down due to the LA wildfires, and will now be made virtually without the usual audience of journalists.