'Sinners' makes history, setting Oscars nomination record

Ryan Coogler’s blues-steeped vampire epic “Sinners” led all films with 16 nominations to the 98th Academy Awards on Thursday, setting a record for the most in Oscar history.

Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences voters showered “Sinners” with more nominations than they had ever bestowed before, breaking the 14-nomination mark set by “All About Eve,” “Titanic” and “La La Land.” Along with best picture, Coogler was nominated for best director and best screenplay, and double-duty star Michael B. Jordan was rewarded with his first Oscar nomination, for best actor.

Paul Thomas Anderson’s father-daughter revolutionary saga “One Battle After Another,” the favorite coming into nominations, trailed in second with 13 of its own. Four of its actors — Leonardo DiCaprio, Teyana Taylor, Benicio del Toro and Sean Penn — were nominated, though newcomer Chase Infiniti was left out in best actress.

In those two top nominees, the film academy put its full force behind a pair of visceral and bracingly original American epics that each connected with a fraught national moment. Coogler’s Jim Crow-era film — the rare horror movie to win the academy’s favor — conjures a mythical allegory of Black life. In “One Battle After Another,” a dormant spirit of rebellion is revived in an out-of-control police state.

Both are also Warner Bros. titles. In the midst of a contentious sale to Netflix, the 102-year-old studio had one of its best Oscar nominations mornings ever. As the fate of Warner Bros., which Netflix is buying for $72 billion, hangs in the balance amid a challenge from Paramount Skydance, Hollywood is bracing for potentially the largest realignment in the film industry’s history.

The 10 films nominated for best picture are “Bugonia,” “F1,” “Frankenstein,” “Hamnet,” “Marty Supreme,” “One Battle After Another,” “The Secret Agent,” “Sentimental Value,” “Sinners” and “Train Dreams.”

Guillermo del Toro’s “Frankenstein,” Josh Safdie’s “Marty Supreme” and Joachim Trier’s “Sentimental Value” all scored nine nominations.

The nine for “Marty Supreme” included a third best actor nod for 30-year-old Timothée Chalamet, the favorite in the category he narrowly missed winning last year for “A Complete Unknown.” With Jordan and Chalamet, the nominees are Leonardo DiCaprio for “One Battle After Another,” Ethan Hawke for “Blue Moon” and Wagner Moura for “The Secret Agent.”

Nominated for best actress was the category favorite, Jessie Buckley (“Hamnet”), along with Rose Byrne (“If I Had Legs I’d Kick You”), Kate Hudson (“Song Sung Blue”), Renate Reinsve (“Sentimental Value”) and two-time winner Emma Stone, who landed her sixth nomination, for “Bugonia.”

The year’s most-watched movie, with more than half a billion views on Netflix, “KPop Demon Hunters,” scored nominations for both best song (“Golden”) and best animated feature. Sony Pictures developed and produced the film, but, after selling it to Netflix, watched it become a worldwide sensation.

Blockbusters otherwise had a difficult morning. Universal Pictures’ “Wicked: For Good” was shut out entirely. While “Avatar: Fire and Ash” notched nominations for costume design and visual effects, it became the first “Avatar” film not nominated for best picture. The biggest box-office hit nominated for Hollywood's top award instead was “F1,” an Apple production that landed four nominations. The streamer partnered with Warner Bros. to distribute the racing drama.

This year, the Oscars are introducing a new category for casting. That new honor helped “Sinners” and “One Battle After Another” pad their already impressive stats. Along with those two films, the nominees are “Hamnet,” “Marty Supreme” and “The Secret Agent.”

The academy, which has expanded its overseas membership in recent years, also continued its tilt toward international films. Every category included one international nominee. For the eighth year in the row, a non-English-language film was nominated for best picture. More non-English performances were nominated than ever before.

The top nominee of them all was Joachim Trier's Norwegian family drama “Sentimental Value.” It cleaned up in the supporting actor categories, with nods for Stellan Skarsgård, Inga Ibsdotter LilIeaas and Elle Fanning. Also nominated for best supporting actress, in addition to Taylor: Amy Madigan for “Weapons” and Wunmi Mosaku for “Sinners.” In supporting actor, the nominees included Jacob Elordi for “Frankenstein” and, in a surprise that likely dislodged Paul Mescal of “Hamnet,” Delroy Lindo for “Sinners.”

A competitive best international feature category mirrored the turbulent state of the world. That included the Iranian revenge drama and Palme d'Or winner “It Was Just an Accident,” by the often-imprisoned filmmaker Jafar Panahi. He's spoken passionately against the ongoing crackdown of demonstrators in his home country. France nominated the film.

Also nominated: the Tunisian entry “The Voice of Hind Rajab,” about volunteers at the Palestine Red Crescent Society; the Brazilian political thriller “The Secret Agent”; the apocalyptic Spanish road movie “Sirât” and “Sentimental Value.”

The 98th Academy Awards will take place on March 15 at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles and will be televised live on ABC and Hulu. YouTube's new deal to exclusively air won't take effect until 2029. This year, Conan O’Brien will return as host.

For more coverage of the Oscars and nominations, visit https://apnews.com/hub/academy-awards.

A replica of an Academy Awards statuette is pictured prior to the 98th Oscars nominations announcement on Thursday, Jan. 22, 2026, at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

FILE - An Oscar statue appears at the 91st Academy Awards Nominees Luncheon, Feb. 4, 2019, in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Photo by Danny Moloshok/Invision/AP, File)

BAGHDAD (AP) — The decision to move prisoners of the Islamic State group from northeast Syria to detention centers in Iraq came after a request by officials in Baghdad that was welcomed by the U.S.-led coalition and the Syrian government, officials said Thursday.

American and Iraqi officials told The Associated Press about the Iraqi request, a day after the U.S. military said that it started transferring some of the 9,000 IS detainees held in more than a dozen detention centers in northeast Syria controlled by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF, in northeast Syria.

The move to start transferring the detainees came after Syrian government forces took control of the sprawling al-Hol camp — which houses thousands of mostly women and children — from the SDF, which withdrew as part of a ceasefire. Troops on Monday seized a prison in the northeastern town of Shaddadeh, where some IS detainees escaped and many were recaptured, state media reported.

The SDF said on Thursday that government forces shelled al-Aqtan prison near the northern Syrian city of Raqqa with heavy weapons, while simultaneously imposing a siege around the prison using tanks and deploying fighters.

Al-Aqtan prison, where some IS prisoners are held, was surrounded by government forces earlier this week and negotiations were ongoing on the future of the detention facility.

With the push by government forces into northeast Syria along the border with Iraq, Bagdad became concerned that some of the detainees might become a danger to Iraq’s security, if they manage to flee from the detention centers amid the chaos.

An Iraqi security official said that the decision to transfer the prisoners from Syria to Iraq was an Iraqi decision, welcomed by the U.S.-led coalition and the Syrian government. The official added that it was in Iraq’s security interest to detain them in Iraqi prisons rather than leaving them in Syria.

Also Thursday, a senior U.S. military official confirmed to the AP that Iraq “offered proactively” to take the IS prisoners rather than the U.S. requesting it of them.

A Syrian foreign ministry official said that the plan to transfer IS prisoners from Syria to Iraq had been under discussion for months before the recent clashes with the SDF.

All three officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to comment publicly.

Over the past several years, the SDF has handed over to Iraqi authorities foreign fighters, including French citizens, who were put on trial and received sentences.

The SDF still controls more than a dozen detention facilities holding around 9,000 IS members, but is slated to hand the prisons over to government control under a peace process that also is supposed to eventually merge the SDF with government forces.

U.S. Central Command said that the first transfer on Wednesday involved 150 IS members, who were taken from Syria’s northeastern province of Hassakeh to “secure locations” in Iraq. The statement said that up to 7,000 detainees could be transferred to Iraqi-controlled facilities.

IS declared a caliphate in 2014 in large parts of Syria and Iraq, attracting large numbers of fighters from around the world.

The militant group was defeated in Iraq in 2017, and in Syria two years later, but IS sleeper cells still carry out deadly attacks in both countries. As a key U.S. ally in the region, the SDF played a major role in defeating IS.

Also Thursday, the SDF accused the government of violating a four-day truce declared on Tuesday. It said Syrian government forces pounded the southern outskirts of the northern town of Kobani, which recently became besieged after the government’s push in the northeast over the past two weeks.

A commander with the Kurdish women’s militia in Syria, speaking from inside Kobani, told reporters during an online news conference that living conditions there are deteriorating.

Nesrin Abdullah of the Women’s Protection Units, or YPJ, said that if the fighting around Kobani continues, thousands of people “will be massacred.”

She said that there was no electricity or running water in the town, which a decade ago became the symbol of resistance against IS. The militants at the time besieged it for months before being pushed back.

“The people here are facing a genocide,” she said. “We have many people in hospitals and hospitals cannot continue if there is no electricity.”

Sewell reported from Beirut. Associated Press journalists Omar Sanadiki in Damascus, Syria and Bassem Mroue in Beirut contributed to this report.

Local youth play atop of a damaged armored vehicle belonging to the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) at the site of clashes with Syrian government forces in the village of al-Hol in northeastern Syria's Hasakeh province, Syria, Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Ghaith Alsayed)