They’re going up, up, up; it’s their moment. EJAE, Mark Sonnenblick, Joong Gyu Kwak, Yu Han Lee, Hee Dong Nam, Jeong Hoon Seon and Teddy Park — the team behind the global smash “Golden” from “KPop Demon Hunters” — took home the original song award at the Oscars on Sunday.
It is a first-time win and nomination for all seven members behind the hit. It is also the first K-pop song to win in the category.
“KPop Demon Hunters” is an animated, musical film about a fictional K-pop girl group tasked with saving the world by defeating demons. Netflix has said it is the platform’s most watched film of all time and has amassed hundreds of millions of hours viewed worldwide. It also produced the highest charting soundtrack of 2025 with eight of its songs landing on the Billboard Hot 100.
“Thank you so much to the Academy,” EJAE started her speech, holding back tears. “This award is not about success, it's about resilience.”
“Golden” beat Diane Warren for “Dear Me” from “Diane Warren: Relentless,” Raphael Saadiq and Ludwig Göransson for “I Lied to You” from “Sinners,” Nicholas Pike for “Sweet Dreams of Joy” from “Viva Verdi!” and Nick Cave and Bryce Dessner for “Train Dreams” from “Train Dreams.”
When nominations were announced in January, EJAE told The Associated Press that she was totally shocked by the recognition. “It just doesn’t feel real even right now. I’m just still trying to digest the situation. It’s just definitely a dream come true. And that’s why, you know, we write — to have a song that everyone can sing, and not just sing, but make them feel good, because the lyrics (are) very uplifting, and challenge them to sing those high notes,” she said. “For me, also, it’s the fact that there are Korean lyrics in it. It is just kind of really crazy to see everyone from all different countries and races singing it. So, I’m just forever grateful to be a part of this incredible film that I wish I grew up watching, too.”
Three-time Academy Award winner Göransson won the Oscar for original score for “Sinners,” winning his third Academy Award.
Göransson beat Jerskin Fendrix (“Bugonia”), Max Richter (“Hamnet”), Jonny Greenwood (“One Battle After Another”) and Alexandre Desplat (“Frankenstein”).
Göransson previously won original score Oscars for 2018’s “Black Panther” and 2023’s “Oppenheimer.”
“My dad bought his first blues album in Sweden, 1964,” Göransson said, crediting his dad’s love of music for his own. He “devoted his whole life to music,” the composer said. Eventually his father gave him a guitar and opened up his world.
“I love the guitar,” he continued. “It was the guitar that eventually led me to one of the greatest storytellers of our time, Ryan Coogler.”
“Sinners” is filmmaker Coogler’s bluesy, vampire, gangster musical about the tenuousness of life in the Jim Crow South. But it’s also a story of two brothers coming home to Mississippi in 1932 to launch a juke joint after spending time on the German front in World War I and then learning from Al Capone in gangland Chicago, as The Associated Press’ Jocelyn Noveck writes in her review. It’s a also story about love, and one about music, especially the transporting power of the blues. “Sinners” entered the night with a record-setting 16 nominations.
When the nominations were announced in January, Göransson told AP that he was grateful for the recognition for this project in particular.
“We woke up to a bunch of amazing, beautiful texts and calls. And it’s very much like a family affair, this film. Everyone on “Sinners,” we’ve been working together for a long time and we’re kind of like a family,” he said. “What’s cool about this film, and what’s incredible about this movie, is that it’s about blues music. It’s about a guitar player. ... Anything we’re hearing today on the radio and from Western culture, you know, wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for blues. Ryan (Coogler) was able to show that in the movie and through the movie.”
For more coverage of the 2026 Oscars, visit https://apnews.com/hub/academy-awards
Miles Caton, far left, performs 'I Lied to You' from "Sinners" with Jayme Lawson, Li Jun Li, and Wunmi Mosaku during the Oscars on Sunday, March 15, 2026, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)
Serena McKinney, left, and Ludwig Göransson arrive at the Oscars on Sunday, March 15, 2026, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)
Ludwig Göransson accepts the award for music (original score) for "Sinners" during the Oscars on Sunday, March 15, 2026, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)
The wait in Hollywood is over: The 98th Academy Awards are underway.
Comedian Conan O’Brien is back for a second year to host the ceremony, held at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. It’s an Oscars race that seemed like a runaway for “One Battle After Another” but may be a close call after all, thanks to some late-season wins for “Sinners.” Other films with several nominations include “Sentimental Value,” “Marty Supreme,” “Frankenstein” and “Hamnet.”
The Latest at the Academy Awards:
The film was the big winner at this year’s Oscars, leading the way with six wins.
It becomes the 42nd film in Oscars history with at least six statuettes.
“Sinners” won four this year and “Frankenstein” won three.
Four people in Jessie Buckley’s Irish family stood up and waved toward the stage from the mezzanine, far out of sight of the stage.
“My family, my Irish family, they’re all here, Ireland bought them flights,” Buckley said. “Mom, dad, thank you for teaching me to dream and to never be defined by expectation but to carve your own passion.”
“We all come from a lineage of women who continue to create against all odds. Thank you for recognizing me in this role,” she said.
Autumn Durald Arkapaw, the first woman and Black person to win the cinematography award told reporters in the press room that she was worried about using her time wisely for her acceptance speech. “Are they going to kick me off?” she recalled wondering. Still, she managed to give a grounded, moving speech, and one she hopes will inspire future filmmakers.
“A lot of little girls who look like me will sleep really well tonight because they’ll want to become cinematographers,” she said. “I know that.”
She decided to ask all the women in the Dolby Theatre to stand up during her speech because “moments like this don’t happen without women kind of standing up for you and advocating for you,” she said.
The win “isn’t about me anymore,” she continued. “It’s about so much more and I wanted it for all of the ladies in the room, and I wanted it for all the girls at home.”
The loudest and rowdiest applause of the evening likely came from inside the press room when Michael B. Jordan was announced as the winner of the best actor prize. Reporters in the room burst into raucous cheers before presenter Adrien Brody could even finish reading out the “Sinners” star’s name.
Michael B. Jordan’s dad stood up and pumped his fist toward the stage. The actor said his father flew in from Ghana for the Oscars.
He was one of the many, many people who gave the “Sinners” star a rousing, standing ovation for his first Oscar win.
“I stand here because of the people that came before me,” he said, adding thanks for the support he’s received throughout his life.
“I feel it, I know you guys want to me to do well, and I want to do that because you guys bet on me.”
Anderson dedicated his win to Adam Somner.
“He’s in a really big bar up in the sky right now,” Anderson said of his late collaborator. “He’s having a gin and tonic, and he is so happy.”
Anderson said of the trophy for best director: “There will always be some doubt in your heart that you deserve it. But there is no question the pleasure of having it for myself.”
The vocalists behind the song, EJAE, Audrey Nuna and Rei Ami, performed it live for the Oscars audience earlier in the night.
As the group of winners accepted the award, the music started up. EJAE, who spoke first, put her hand up and said, “Please stop.” The music kept going as her fellow winners tried to speak and then the lights dimmed as they cut to commercial.
Inside, two people continued to try to speak, the audience seemed a little upset and the mic was completely cut off. The play-off music was loud and definitive.
“This film is about a very dysfunctional family and it’s the opposite of what I felt with this beautiful group behind me,” the filmmaker behind the feature, Joachim Trier, said.
He also quoted James Baldwin: “All adults are responsible for all children,” adding that people should not vote for politicians who don’t take this into account.
Per Academy rules, a country may only submit one film for consideration in the international feature film category.
In Iran, a government-backed committee controlled film submissions, and was unlikely to consider dissident films like “It Was Just an Accident” by filmmaker Jafar Panahi.
So France submitted the film instead. Panahi lives in France for part of the year, the cofinancing company was French, some of the producers were French, the editing was done in Paris and the film played in France.
“The Voice of Hind Rajab,” about the story of a 6-year-old killed in Gaza, is Tunisia’s entry. The director Kaouther Ben Hania is Tunisian, and Palestine submitted a different film.
Audience members waved golden light sticks in the air, a common sight at Korean pop concerts, as “Kpop Demon Hunters” singers EJAE, Audrey Nuna and Rei Ami took the stage to sing “Golden.”
Arkapaw becomes the first woman and Black person to win the award.
“I really want all the women in this room to stand up, because I feel like I don’t get here without you guys.”
The crowd began applauding as the women in the audience got on their feet.
“I would like to dedicate this to my aunt, Barbara Hall, who was film archivist for the Academy for over 25 years, showing me old movies and teaching me about film history,” Jurgensen said.
The prize recognized the work of Gareth John, Al Nelson, Gwendolyn Yates Whittle, Gary A. Rizzo and Juan Peralta in the movie.
Blues changed the life of Göransson’s family.
“My dad bought his first blues album in Sweden, 1964,” Göransson said.
“Even though it was on the other side of the world from a place my dad had never been, and a place he could not relate to, the music was so powerful it changed my dad’s life.”
“'Mr Nobody Against Putin' is about how you lose your country. And what we saw when working with this footage is that you lose it through countless small, little acts of complicity,” filmmaker David Borenstein said.
“We all face a moral choice, but luckily, even a nobody is more powerful than you think,” he said.
In this short directed by Joshua Seftel and produced by Conall Jones, journalist Steve Hartman and photographer Lou Bopp document the empty bedrooms of children killed in school shootings over the course of seven years.
Gloria Cazares, whose child was killed in the Uvalde school shooting, accepted the award.
“My daughter, Jackie, was nine years old when she was killed in Uvalde. Since that day, her bedroom has been frozen in time,” she said.
Jimmy Kimmel’s return to the Oscars stage (“Wait, am I not hosting?”) and ABC telecast where he served as host four times still can’t possibly be as dramatic as the year he just had.
ABC and parent company Disney yanked his late-night show “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” off the air in September for remarks he made following the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
Kimmel’s indefinite suspension was celebrated by President Donald Trump. But it wouldn’t even be a week before he returned to the air with much stronger ratings than before.
His jokes at Trump’s expense prompted the president to post that ABC needed to “get the bum off the air.”
But Kimmel instead got a contract extension in December.
The award recognizes the work of Joe Letteri, Richard Baneham, Eric Saindon and Daniel Barrett.
Tamara Deverell and Shane Vieau won best production design for the film.
Barbra Streisand’s tribute to Robert Redford highlighted the late actor-director’s history of defending press freedoms, protecting the environment and encouraging new voices in film.
“Bob had real backbone on and off the screen,” she said.
Babs, as Redford used to call her, sang “The Way We Were” at the end of her tribute.
“I miss him now more than ever, even though he loved teasing me,” she said, explaining how she got the nickname.
“Believe me when I say there is an actress of my generation who was not inspired by and enthralled with her absolute singularity,” she said.
McAdams told the audience a Girl Scout song Keaton used to sing set on film sets:
"Make new friends, but keep the old. One is silver, the other is gold. A circle is round, it has no end. That’s how long, I will be your friend."
Billy Crystal opened the in memoriam segment honoring his best friend, Rob Reiner.
He ticked off a list of Reiner’s films, including “When Harry Met Sally,” starring Crystal and Meg Ryan, “Stand By Me,” “Say Anything” and “This is Spinal Tap,” among many others.
A photo of Reiner and his wife, Michelle Singer Reiner, appeared behind Crystal.
The Reiners were found dead in their Los Angeles home in December. Their son, Nick Reiner, has been charged in the deaths of his parents and has pleaded not guilty.
Having a slew of actors with longstanding ties to Reiner — Meg Ryan, Kiefer Sutherland, Fred Savage, Demi Moore, John Cusack, Ione Skye and many others — come on stage for the tribute was reminiscent of how the Academy did the same for director John Hughes at the Oscars 16 years ago.
For his first original film, not adapted from any source material, Coogler won the original screenplay Oscar — his very first. He’s also up for more awards tonight.
Before accepting his award for original screenplay, Coogler embraced his wife, Zinzi Coogler, who is a producer and worked with him on “Sinners.” He then went down the line with his cast, hugging Jack O’Connell, Wunmi Mosaku, Delroy Lindo and, lastly, his frequent collaborator and friend, Michael B. Jordan.
During his speech, he asked the “Sinners” cast and crew to stand up. “You’re all winners in my book,” he said.
In adapting Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel about a subculture of aging rebels, “Vineland,” Anderson reworked everything from the timeline to the characters’ names to more details than can be listed in brief.
But he does capture the humor, the cynicism and the sweep of Pynchon, the sense of a ragged community of outsiders caught up by forces far beyond even its own paranoid assumptions.
“I wrote this movie for my kids to say sorry for the housekeeping mess that we left in this world we’re handing off to them,” Anderson said.
He won as supporting actor for “One Battle After Another.”
“Sean Penn couldn’t be here this evening,” presenter Kieran Culkin said. “Or didn’t want to, so I’ll be accepting the award on his behalf.”
Penn did little campaigning this awards season, and also stayed away from the Actor Awards and BAFTA Awards, where he won trophies.
It’s not the first time Penn has no-showed at the Oscars.
The 65-year-old actor has never appeared too attached to Hollywood hardware, whether he wins or loses. He previously gave one of his Oscars to Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
The live action short category resulted in a tie (“Two People Exchanging Saliva” and “The Singers” each got statuettes) this year. But this is not the first time this has happened at the Oscars.
The most recent tie came during the 2013 Oscars honoring films from 2012, when “Zero Dark Thirty” and “Skyfall” tied for the sound editing category. There have been five other ties in Oscars history, making Sunday’s tie the seventh.
The first tie, which was at the 5th Academy Awards almost 100 years ago, was based on an old rule. Wallace Beery (“The Champ”) and Fredric March (“Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”) tied for best actor. They came within exactly one vote of each other, and in accordance with Academy rules at the time, they shared the recognition. That rule has since changed and only an exact match in totals would qualify as a tie today, according to the Academy.
“Thank you to the Academy for supporting a movie that is weird, that is queer, and made by a majority of women!” said Natalie Musteata of “Two People Exchanging Saliva.”
Director Sam A. Davis of “Singers” called his short a “simple story about the power of music and art to bring us together in a moment when we live in an increasingly isolated world.”
Kulukundis thanked the academy for making this award happen: “I dedicate this to you and to the casting directors who never got a chance to get up here, who didn’t even get a chance to get their name on the movie.”
Kulukundis has served as the casting director on past Oscar favorites including “The Brutalist” and “There Will Be Blood.”
She has worked on all 10 of “One Battle After Another” director Paul Thomas Anderson’s feature films, beginning as an intern on his debut film “Hard Eight” in 1996.
Host Conan O’Brien aimed his comedic barbs towards screenagers and the generally phone-obsessed in a short pre-taped segment about a (surely fictional) film lab that reimagines classic films to be optimal for smart phone viewing.
So-called “advanced” technology isolates the most visually interesting part of the shot for the vertical-only version, but that is often not the most interesting or dynamic part of the shot. An example was the infamous orgasm scene from the late Rob Reiner’s “When Harry Met Sally,” where the vertical-only shot does not show an animated Meg Ryan, but rather a woman in the background who is taking a sip from a glass.
Only five awards into the night, “Frankenstein” is a two-time winner already after taking home the Oscar for costume design, as well as hair and makeup.
“While we’re making this film, we had the sense we’re part of something very special, and tonight confirms that,” makeup artist Mike Hill said. Jordan Samuel and Cliona Furey were the other artists on the award-winning team.
“On behalf of myself and the amazing team that I work with, the artisans, the alchemists, dream weavers, we’re so grateful to the Academy for recognizing our craft,” said Kate Hawley, the film’s costume designer.
Miles Caton and Raphael Saadiq are performing “I Lied to You,” the nominated original song from “Sinners.” They’re joined by a bevy of performers onstage — Misty Copeland, Eric Gales, Buddy Guy, Brittany Howard, Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, Jayme Lawson, Li Jun Li, Bobby Rush, Shaboozey and Alice Smith among them — for a near-recreation of the scene in “Sinners” where the song is introduced.
It is one of the more memorable moments in the film, where a blues song in a Mississippi juke joint opens up to showcase hip-hop DJs, rock ‘n’ roll guitarists, ballerinas and more, illustrating the Black music genre’s place at the foundation of American popular culture.
When the live tribute performance to “Sinners” wrapped on stage, there was a slew of applause, some of which came from people who stood for the ovation.
The highest praise may have come from Michael B. Jordan himself, who nodded and smiled.
The message was clear: The star approved, big time.
The Canadian film is about a poor boy who falls in love with a girl who cries those gemstones, and he decides to pawn them for money. Directed by Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski, the boy ends up making a choice between pearls and love. It takes place in Montreal.
“To Canada,” Lavis and Szczerbowski said while accepting their award.
Three years ago, Arden Cho was ready to walk away from acting. She’d landed her first lead role in the Netflix series “Partner Track,” only to see it canceled after one season. She was heartbroken.
Her agent wouldn’t let her go. “She refused to say, ‘You’re done.’ She just kept sending me things,” Cho said. “She just keep being like, ‘Look, I know you’re not auditioning. I know you’re done, but I think you’d like this.’”
Now, Cho is juggling multiple projects after voicing the lead character Rumi in Netflix’s animated summertime sensation “KPop Demon Hunters,” which has become the all-time most-streamed movie on the platform — and spawned inescapable earworms “Golden” and “Soda Pop” as its soundtrack dominated pop charts.
And now it’s an Oscar winner.
“This is for Korea and Koreans everywhere,” said “KPop Demon Hunters” co-director Maggie Kang.
Madigan, following a deep cackle, said she thought of her speech in the shower the day before.
“We’re kind of advised, ’Don’t say all these names, as nobody knows who the hell these people are,’” she said. “But you’re not rattling them off. They mean something to you; that you couldn’t be here without them.”
AP Film Writers Jake Coyle and Lindsey Bahr both picked Teyana Taylor (“One Battle After Another”) to win best supporting actress. So did 40% of readers on apnews.com, with Amy Madigan (“Weapons”) their second pick.
Madigan won — and Taylor seemed to be the first to leap from her seat in celebration when she was announced.
Conan O’Brien is off and running at the Oscars.
“I’m Conan O’Brien and I’m honored to be the last human host of the Academy Awards,” O’Brien said. “Yes! Yeah! Next year it’s going to be a Waymo in a tux.”
And the jokes kept coming.
“Last year when I hosted Los Angeles was on fire,” O’Brien said. “But this year, everything’s going great.”
He also quipped that there’s an alternate Oscars being hosted by Kid Rock, a nod to the hubbub over Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show.
Conan O’Brien’s opening skit: He complains about wearing too much makeup as Aunt Gladys from “Weapons,” says he looks like “Bette Davis with lupus” and it’s all done to the soundtrack of “Sabotage” from the Beastie Boys, all as he runs through various scenes of this year’s nominated films.
“I can’t believe I learned Norwegian for this,” he says, via subtitles, at one point. He then got chased onto the stage by a horde of children.
The irreverent tone for the opening is now set.
Liza Powel O'Brien, left, and Conan O'Brien arrive at the Oscars on Sunday, March 15, 2026, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)
A general view of atmosphere inside the Oscars on Sunday, March 15, 2026, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. (Photo by Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP)
People look on as workers install Oscar statues Saturday, March 14, 2026, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles, in preparation for Sunday's 98th Academy Awards ceremony. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)
