One Battle After Another wins 2026 Best Picture

One Battle After Another won Best Picture at the 2026 Academy Awards, giving Paul Thomas Anderson the night’s top prize and capping one of the season’s strongest awards runs.

Written and directed by Anderson, the film stars Leonardo DiCaprio as a former political radical and single father, with Regina Hall, Sean Penn, Teyana Taylor, Benicio del Toro and Chase Infiniti in the supporting cast. It arrived at the ceremony with 13 Oscar nominations, the second-most of the year behind Sinners, and had been widely seen as a leading contender.

Loosely inspired by Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland, the sprawling picture was praised for marrying big-budget action to Anderson’s distinctive tone; one review described it as a rare, essential film for the present moment. The movie is streaming on HBO Max and was released on September 26, 2025 with a runtime of 162 minutes.

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