2025 Oscars: Best Production Design Predictions

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Final voting is February 11-18. The 97th Oscars telecast will be broadcast on Sunday, March 2 and air live on ABC at 7 p.m. ET/ 4 p.m. PT. We update our picks throughout awards season, so keep checking IndieWire for all our 2025 Oscar predictions.

The State of the Race

The Best Production Design nominees are “The Brutalist,” “Conclave,” “Dune: Part Two,” “Nosferatu,” and “Wicked,” which is the favorite for its colorful and imaginative Oz world-building. But “The Brutalist” is getting plenty of buzz for its meta architectural work.

Jon M. Chu’s “Wicked” tells the origin story of Elphaba/the Wicked Witch (Oscar-nominated Cynthia Erivo) and Galinda/Glinda the Good Witch (Oscar-nominated Ariana Grande). Production designer Nathan Crowley (a seven-time Oscar nominee) and set decorator Lee Sandales mapped out Oz using models, illustrations, and visual references to create each environment: The highlights are the rainbow-colored Munchkinland, with its 9 million tulips, the Italian-looking Shiz University, where Elphaba and Galinda first meet, and the elegant Emerald City. Crowley also designed the Emerald City Express, a mechanical automaton, and The Wizard’s large, wooden, mechanical head.

Brady Corbet’s post-Holocaust drama, “The Brutalist,” pits Oscar-nominated Adrien Brody as visionary architect László Tóth against Oscar-nominated Guy Pearce as industrialist Harrison Lee Van Buren. The Brutalist architectural movement from the ’50s emerged from post-war trauma and works beautifully in the VistaVision format. The minimalist style was comprised of bold shapes made from concrete or brick. Production designer Judy Becker made prop models for Tóth and actual models to build the sets and furniture (from set decorator Patrica Cuccia). The most prominent set was The Institute, which was Tóth’s unfinished passion project, representing both the imprisonment of the concentration camp barracks and the idea of freedom.

“Conclave,” Edward Berger’s follow-up to “All Quiet on the Western Front,” is a psychological thriller in which Ralph Fiennes’ Cardinal searches for a successor to the deceased Pope, who harbored a dark secret. Production designer Suzie Davies (“Saltburn”) and set decorator Cynthia Sleiter meticulously recreated the Vatican interiors at Cinecittà Studios, especially the sequestered conclave inside the Sistine Chapel. This was a combination of light and dark, traditional and modern, male and female. For example, there’s a hermetically sealed, posh prison approach to the fictional Casa Santa Marta Vatican apartments, where the cardinals reside, and slightly more freedom inside the Sistine Chapel. Fortunately, Cinecittà had an existing set for the latter in storage.

Oscar-winning “Dune” production designer Patrice Vermette and set decorator Shane Vieau (an Oscar winner for “The Shape of Water”) take a deeper dive into the Fremen and Harkonnen cultures, with 40 percent more sets to work with. The mysterious, hidden world of the nomadic Fremen is slowly being buried. This is the metaphor of the interior Sietch set, which is filled with sand. A bone harmonica inspired the Cave of Birds, the interior of which looks like giant fingerprints. The Maker’s Temple is a figure eight, symbolizing eternity, in which sand represents death and water life. The Cistern of Souls is where the Fremen collect water from the dead to sustain them in preparation for their dream of a green Arrakis. For Giedi Primi, Vermette was inspired by septic tanks because he associated the Hardonnen with having the morals of a sewer. This became the basis for his use of inky black plastic and silver.

Robert Eggers’ “Nosferatu” offers a more folkloric take on the vampire film with pre-Victorian gothic horror. Shot throughout Prague (including Barrandov Studios, the 14th-century Rožmitál Castle, and the Invalidovna complex), production designer Craig Lathrop and set decorator Beatrice Brentnerová leaned into architectural authenticity as a way of grounding the horror. They recreate a 19th-century German town and contrast that with a 15th-century castle in Romania, where Bill Skarsgård’s Count Orlok lives.

Nominees are listed below in order of likelihood they will win.