Top row, from left: Chinatown, Taxi Driver, Apocalypse Now. Bottom row, from left: Sinners, Marty Supreme, Bugonia and One Battle After Another. Courtesy of Warner Bros. (3); Courtesy of A24; Courtesy of Focus Features; Courtesy Everett Collection (3) When Bob Evans was a young actor, Darryl Zanuck famously shut down everyone who wanted Evans off of The Sun Also Rises. "The kid stays in the picture," Zanuck proclaimed, a line that both inspired Evans to become a producer and, of course, works in a double entendre as an ode to Evans' career resilience. The iconoclast of 1970s Hollywood died six years ago, but he's been top of mind in the film business lately. Evans' presence can be felt everywhere in this year's Oscar class. The Paramount executive turned producer famously steered some of the great works of the era with his gut-based maverick style, and so many of the English-language nominees descend from that same unruly spirit: Sinners, One Battle After Another, Hamnet, Marty Supreme, Bugonia. All movies distributed by big American companies, yet all eschewing the logic those companies were supposed to follow - no sequels, franchises or universes in sight. Related Stories Music Bruno Mars to Perform at 2026 Grammys TV Canadian Screen Awards to Be Broadcast by Multiple Networks to Revive Ratings Amid Industry Uncertainty In fact, Oscar voters seemed to reject all that modern Hollywood orthodoxy: Wicked: For Good fizzled despite the preseason predictions it was about to Lord of the Rings the Oscars, and Avatar: Fire and Ash became the first movie in the series - and James Cameron's first in 31 years - not to be nominated for best picture. Instead, the Academy honored gritty films with daring visions and directors who, like Coppola and Scorsese and Polanski and Friedkin and Lumet before them, simply couldn't be bothered to give a shit. Safdie, PTA, Coogler, Zhao and Lanthimos would long feel honored at any association with that group. This year, they showed they belonged in it. The similarities are hardly an accident. Those great '70s movies grew out of the desperation and dysfunction of the studio system at the time, which opened the door to visionaries with something to say (and, sometimes, a ridiculously high budget to say it with). The desperation and dysfunction these days comes with a lot more Wall Street and techno-dystopia. But when a streaming company and a software scion are fighting over one of Hollywood's most iconic studios like two jocks at a high school dance, the best thing Warner Bros. can do is put forth some '70s-worthy movies amid the scrum. Which is exactly what the Sinners and One Battle studio heads Michael De Luca and Pam Abdy have done. "We're happy that as an original swing, it's worked out, and we hope it inspires the other studios to take more original swings," De Luca told THR after Sinners' release in April. At one time thought on the corporate chopping block, De Luca and Abdy have responded by just going for it, Evans-style. Nor is the pair stopping with the 2025 class. Ten days before the Oscars, Warners will bring out The Bride!, Maggie Gyllenhaal's period take on the Bride of Frankenstein, a splashy feminist retelling sparing no artistic quarter or, at a budget of at least $80 million, dollar. All that could turn this year's Oscars telecast into Matt Remick's (The Studio) wildest fantasy. The Kool-Aid demon has seemingly been defeated. If we had any doubt we are returning to that '70s era, consider this: Warners has the top two Oscar frontrunners in Sinners (a record-breaking 16 total noms) and One Battle (a still-dazzling second place of 13). The last time one major studio had the top two Oscar frontrunners it was reluctant to choose between? Why, it was 1975, when Paramount had The Godfather Part II and Chinatown - both the handiwork of Bob Evans. This Oscars wayback moment comes with good and bad news. The good news is just how diverse these new movies are. Unlike even the '70s, which really only elevated a handful of genres like the crime drama, the 2020s has gotten downright freewheeling, giving vampire movies, sports movies and sci-fi movies the gritty auteur treatment too. The bad news is it may not last. That high school jock fight could end with Warners getting subsumed by a tech company with little interest in cinema or a tech magnate with a lot of interest in back-office streamlining; whether it's part of Netflix or part of Paramount, it almost surely won't be Warner Bros. The great surge of cinema may also be a last rite for cinema. But that's tomorrow's problem. We have four weeks before Warner Bros. shareholders have to decide whether they'll sell to David Ellison or stick with the Netflix plan, and six weeks before voters must finalize their ballots on which of the Warner Bros. (or other) movies they see fit to honor. All we can do in the meantime is sit back and enjoy this gleeful unleashing of art. As for De Luca and Abdy, they'll campaign for their movies l