‘Cancel the Oscars’: Fans Are Baffled Over ‘Challengers’ Snub for Best Original Score
Challengers received no Oscar nominations this year, but one snub in particular has baffled fans: the best original score category, which showed no love to the project starring Zendaya, Mike Faist and Josh O’Connor.
After the Academy unveiled its list of nominees Thursday (Jan. 23) — revealing that the Luca Guadagnino-directed film had been completely shut out from all the categories, including music honors — fans flooded social media to protest. Omitting Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ critically acclaimed Challengers album – which the Academy shortlisted in December — the best original score category sees only Daniel Blumberg’s The Brutalist, Volker Bertelmann’s Conclave, Clément Ducol and Camille’s Emilia Pérez, John Powell and Stephen Schwartz’s Wicked and Kris Bowers’ The Wild Robot soundtracks in the running.
The Nine Inch Nails founder and his co-composer also missed out on a best original song recognition for “Compress/Repress,” with only tracks from Emilia Pérez, The Six Triple Eight, Sing Sing and Elton John: Never Too Late making the list.
Though diehard fans of the film weren’t exactly pleased with any of the snubs, the best original score exclusion hit them the hardest — so much so, the phrase “best original score” as well as the movie’s title were trending on X immediately after nominations went live thanks to an influx of Challengers posts. “No best original score Oscar nomination for CHALLENGERS’ Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross is ridiculous,” one person wrote, while another fan posted, “challengers has the best original score of all time idgaf what the academy says.”
One person thought that “recency bias” must be the reason for the original score exclusion — Challengers premiered in April last year, several months before any of the category’s nominees were released — while another person proclaimed, “challengers original score snub cancel the oscars.”
Reznor and Ross’ snub comes despite the duo winning best original score at the 2025 Golden Globes earlier this month, beating out Conclave, The Brutalist, The Wild Robot, Emilia Pérez and Dune: Part Two. The duo previously won Oscars in 2010 for their soundtrack work on The Social Network and in 2020 for Soul, the latter which was shared with Jon Batiste.
See how fans are reacting to Challengers‘ best original score snub below.
Hannah Dailey
Billboard
