The Oscars’ newest category might already have a certified winner
For the first time since Best Animated Feature debuted in 2002, the 2026 Oscars have unveiled a brand-new category: Achievement in Casting.
This Sunday, the Academy Awards will take place in Hollywood, with its history-making haul of nominations including a collection of casting directors, whose profession is being honoured for the first time in the history of the event.
The new category will be around just long enough to feel novel before Best Stunts arrives in 2028 to steal its thunder, but for now, it is Hollywood’s attempt to reward one of the industry’s most invisible but vital crafts.
But in order to distinguish itself as a category and truly honour the art of casting, there’s only one film that should win the inaugural award: The Secret Agent.Let me explain.
As casting director Mark Summers put it: ‘Casting is a bit like The Wizard of Oz – lots of smoke and mirrors. Few people truly see how hard we work, or how much support we give actors throughout the process.
‘Casting directors are usually the first people brought onto a production. We’re the first to make the calls, and often the last to be thanked. So having a casting award is genuinely fantastic – and honestly, it should have happened a long time ago.’
That sense of overdue recognition hangs over this year’s race, making it extremely important that the Academy awards it to the right film and sets a precedent for years to come.
But according to Paddy Power, Sinners is the overwhelming favourite at 3/10, miles ahead of One Battle After Another at 13/5, with The Secret Agent way out in the cold at 13/1.
Even the bookmaker all but shrugs at its chances, saying: ‘At 13/1 you probably wouldn’t put too much effort into writing an acceptance speech if you are part of the The Secret Agent team… but you’d want to make sure you’ve something prepared in your top pocket nonetheless.
‘Sinners looks to have this one in the bag, but Hollywood always loves an underdog story!’
How the newest Oscars category risks being redundant
The inaugural shortlist is revealing. Every nominee comes from a Best Picture contender: Hamnet, Marty Supreme, One Battle After Another, The Secret Agent, and Sinners – and that’s a major red flag for the new category.
If the casting winner simply mirrors Best Picture or even Best Director, the category becomes repetitive. In either case, it risks functioning as a supporting trophy for films that are already being rewarded elsewhere.
Summers highlighted the fault line: ‘A lot of Hollywood films are pre-packaged: they come with the director and the star already attached. But casting awards arguably should recognise the people working in independent films. On an indie, you start with just a script and no cast and you do absolutely everything. On bigger budget studio films, you often already have a starting point.’
This is where the distinction has to be drawn.
Sinners’ casting director, Francine Maisler, is an industry legend with over a dozen Best Picture nominees to her name, including winners. It is no small thing that her film required thousands of auditions to find Miles Caton, a first-time actor and musician capable of anchoring a musical vampire thriller.
But that achievement is still nested inside an already powerful industrial machine: a major studio film with significant backing, profile, and momentum.
If the first Casting Oscar goes to the most visible film with the most visible campaign, the category will immediately collapse into a proxy for overall prestige.
Why does The Secret Agent deserve to win the Oscar for achievement in casting?
For the new award to matter, casting has to be judged on its own merits, not on box office results or production scale.
Instead, it has to be judged on whether the casting itself creates something that would not otherwise exist, and nowhere is that clearer than in The Secret Agent.
Gabriel Domingues’s work on the film is not flashy, but instead does something much harder: it constructs an entire social world from scratch.
Set in late-1970s Brazil under military rule, much of The Secret Agent unfolds inside a safe house in Recife, filled with misfits, refugees, radicals, and survivors.
Domingues blends professional actors with non-actors in a way that feels almost anthropological. Faces look lived-in and bodies look shaped by labour, class, and history.
That added magic is not directing, or production design, or screenplay, but casting as authorship and storytelling.
There is also a telling awards split: The Secret Agent appears in Best Casting but not Best Director, where Joachim Trier edged it out.
That gap exposes that the film’s most singular creative intervention may not be behind the camera, but in the act of choosing who stands in front of it.
The character of Dona Sebastian, played by 79-year-old first-time actor Tânia Maria in a role written specifically for her, becomes the film’s gravitational centre as Wagner Moura’s landlord.
Her performance is so unvarnished and specific that it could not have been manufactured through training or star casting, and it only exists because someone recognised that her presence carried an entire history within it.
That decision is the film’s master stroke, and it’s a victory that belongs distinctly to casting.
Summers puts it plainly when discussing his craft: ‘The entire production relies on casting. Without casting, there is no production.’
If the Academy simply crowns whichever Best Picture frontrunner has the strongest overall narrative, the new category will signal that casting is subordinate to directing and producing.
If, instead, it honours work that transforms a script into a living social organism, then it establishes casting as a primary creative force.
What movie do you want to win Best Casting?
-
One Battle After Another
And The Secret Agent’s nomination has already sparked discussion among awards obsessives who hope the category can prove its independence.
‘The Secret Agent showing up here was probably my favorite nomination,’ wrote one user on Reddit.
‘The cast is wonderful! It should win this award if the category is going to matter at all’ said another.
So yes, in betting terms, The Secret Agent taking home the trophy is a long shot. But if the Academy wants Achievement in Casting to mean something distinct from Best Picture and Best Director – if it wants this category to justify its own existence – then the winner has to be the one whose casting changed the film at its very core.
And on that measure, The Secret Agent stands alone.
The Secret Agent is out in UK cinemas from February 20, 2026
Got a story?
If you’ve got a celebrity story, video or pictures get in touch with the Metro.co.uk entertainment team by emailing us celebtips@metro.co.uk, calling 020 3615 2145 or by visiting our Submit Stuff page – we’d love to hear from you.
MORE: Radiohead star demands music is removed from ‘dull’ Melania documentary
MORE: Catherine O’Hara’s cause of death revealed after actress died aged 71
MORE: Travis Kelce’s ex stars in advert that takes thinly-veiled swipe at Taylor Swift