While there’s widespread relief from many to be saying goodbye to yet another extended awards season, for others, it means something else: the start of the next. Festival slots are being negotiated, release dates are being discussed, campaigns are being plotted and, so inevitably, staggeringly, perhaps stupidly, early predictions are being made.

So take these 10 potential contenders with a pinch of salt unless of course they turn out to be entirely accurate then instead, look back on them, and the Guardian at large, in stunned awe.

Tom Hanks

Photograph: Mike Blake/Reuters

It has been 18 years since Hanks received his last Oscar nomination, after a decade of almost non-stop adoration from the Academy and before a string of perceived snubs for his work in Captain Phillips, Bridge of Spies and The Post. Next year sees him campaigning for a comeback as children’s television staple Mister Rogers in A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, a drama that acts as a narrative sibling to last year’s surprise hit documentary Won’t You Be My Neighbor? While the sugary combination of actor and character might already be giving you toothache, the film’s director Marielle Heller, who brought complex and often cruel characters to the screen in Diary of a Teenage Girl and Can You Ever Forgive Me?, suggests something far spikier.

Quentin Tarantino

Photograph: Laurent Cipriani/AP

It speaks to Tarantino’s standing with the Academy that The Hateful Eight was seen as a blip, despite winning one Oscar and being nominated for two others. Before the snowy Agatha Christie-esque exercise in self-indulgence, he’d had a brief streak with Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained nabbing 13 nominations between them, and it’s a safe bet his next film will see him back in the main races once again. As well as a soft spot for Tarantino, the Academy has an even softer one for films about films and his 60s-set Once Upon a Time in Hollywood reads like Academy catnip. As well as the LA setting, there’s a stacked cast (including Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio, Margot Robbie and Al Pacino) and a storyline that brings in everyone from Steve McQueen to Sharon Tate.

Natalie Portman

Photograph: Mario Anzuoni/Reuters

Ever since she was named best actress for Black Swan, Portman has taken the unconventional route of mostly avoiding obvious Oscar-bait roles. She’s cropped up in the Thor franchise, slummed it in comedies like No Strings Attached and Your Highness, stared into space for Terrence Malick in Knight of Cups and Song to Song and hunted indefinable aggressors in Annihilation. Her one nomination since, for playing Jackie Kennedy, was in a strange, complicated and provocative drama that defied stuffy biopic formula, and last year she was put forward for Vox Lux, a similarly curious and unusual film. Her next project sounds like a surer thing for awards attention, playing a woman whose affair with a fellow astronaut sends her on a downward spiral. Although with Fargo and Legion’s Noah Hawley in the director’s chair, expect the unexpected.

Daniel Kaluuya

Photograph: Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP

After his powerful performance in Get Out snagged him a best actor nomination (and, in my mind, should have led to him taking home the Oscar), Daniel Kaluuya followed it with a banner year as one of the SAG-winning Black Panther ensemble and arguably the MVP of Steve McQueen’s Widows, his menacing turn deserving of even more awards attention. In 2020, he could have a strong chance with Queen & Slim, the directorial debut from Melina Matsoukas, acclaimed director of many a music video as well as episodes of Insecure and Master of None. The prescient tale, written by Lena Waithe, sees a black couple’s first date go wrong when they shoot a cop in self-defence before going on the run.

Gary Oldman

Photograph: Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP

Gary Oldman’s post-Oscar career has provided him with hours even darker than the one that got him there with critically loathed sci-fi thriller Tau and bland Gerard Butler actioner Hunter Killer to his name. In-between some of the schlockier films he has on the horizon, including haunted boat horror Mary and crime thriller Killers Anonymous, Oldman will play lawyer Jürgen Mossack in Steven Soderbergh’s hotly anticipated Panama Papers drama The Laundromat. He’s one of many cast members who could see himself in the race with Meryl Streep, David Schwimmer, Jeffrey Wright, Matthias Schoenaerts all starring alongside.

Annette Bening

Photograph: Dan Steinberg/Invision/AP

One of the few performances here that some critics, including myself, have already seen is Annette Bening’s rich, detailed take on senator Dianne Feinstein in The Report, a compelling, angry retelling of the investigation into post 9/11 torture practices. It’s commanding work that avoids mere mimicry and Bening exists on that surprising list of great actors who have never won an Oscar, despite four nominations, and given how the Academy has been turning bridesmaids into brides in recent years, from Leo to Glenn, a best supporting actress win could make sense. The film’s talky, unemotional directness might turn some voters off but, aside from Scott Z Burns’ info-packed script, she has the best chance of recognition.

Cynthia Erivo

Photograph: Jonathan Brady/PA

Making small but impactful impressions last year in both Widows and Bad Times at El Royale, the Tony-winning actor and singer Cynthia Erivo is about to enjoy a much bigger year. She’ll crop up in Doug Liman’s big-budget YA adaptation Chaos Walking, 12 Years a Slave writer John Ridley’s sci-fi adventure Needle in a Timestack and, most prominently, as abolitionist and activist Harriet Tubman in an awards-aiming biopic. Film-makers have tried to bring Tubman’s story to the screen before, with a Viola Davis-starring project once mooted, but final responsibility was given to Kasi Lemmons, who impressed with her 1997 debut Eve’s Bayou and next year, could become the first woman of colour to nab a nomination for best director.

James Gray

Photograph: Ben Stansall/AFP/Getty Images

If you were one of the precious few who saw James Gray’s last film, the wonderful yet sorely underseen adventure The Lost City Of Z, you’ll also be aware of how sorely under-nominated it was as well. The director started out in smaller, grittier crime fare but his bleak period drama The Immigrant, also sorely underseen, kicked off a new, more ambitious phase in his career. He’s expanding his scope even further with Ad Astra, a pet project that’s set to be one of 2019’s most fascinating films, starring Brad Pitt as an engineer traveling through the solar system to find his lost father, played by Tommy Lee Jones. Gray has compared the story to Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness while also claiming it will be “the most realistic depiction of space travel that’s been put in a movie”. Its May release date could also suggest a Cannes premiere.

Charlize Theron

Photograph: Felipe Trueba/EPA

Oscar winner Charlize Theron found herself on the outskirts of the most recent best actress race with her lived in portrayal of a mother under pressure in Tully, but next time she might fare better in the best supporting actress category with her latest transformative role. In the Untitled Roger Ailes Project, working title Fair and Balanced, she’s taking on Megyn Kelly as she helped take on the misogynistic culture at Fox News. But just in case you might worry that Kelly will be branded as some sort of hero, given her heinous history of racism, reports suggest that The Big Short writer Charles Randolph has crafted her as “ambitious, hard-working and not highly intelligent”. The stacked cast, also including Nicole Kidman, Margot Robbie, John Lithgow, Kate McKinnon and Allison Janney, suggests multiple nominations could be in store.

Zazie Beetz

Photograph: Taylor Jewell/Invision/AP

One of the many great things about Donald Glover’s dazzling awards magnet Atlanta is the rise of Zazie Beetz, an actor whose charming yet underused presence makes one crave so much more. She has since cropped up in Deadpool 2, High Flying Bird and, ermmm, Geostorm and this year, she will be in pretty much everything. While roles in schlocky horror Wounds and the Joaquin Phoenix-starring Joker movie are unlikely to inspire Academy acclaim, Beetz will also appear in two juicy Oscar prospects. The first is Lucy in the Sky, the aforementioned drama that stars Natalie Portman as a troubled astronaut, and the second is Against All Enemies, where she will play activist Dorothy Jamal in a fact-based thriller also starring Kristen Stewart.