With the recent announcement of the 2026 Actor Awards nominations — the awards show formerly known as the SAGs — one film performer in particular stood out for not coming from one of the five designated Best Ensemble casts (Sinners, One Battle After Another, Frankenstein, Marty Supreme, and Hamnet) that account for 13 of the 20 individual nominees. Of the remaining seven, two come from Bugonia and four have been heavily discussed in awards conversations (Ethan Hawke, Rose Byrne, Amy Madigan, and Ariana Grande). That just leaves Kate Hudson, nominated for her performance in Song Sung Blue, a movie that might have just gotten its awards-season second wind.
This isn’t the first time anyone has mentioned Hudson in the 2025-2026 awards derby. She’s nominated for a Golden Globe, albeit in the much easier category of Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy. Variety even lists her as a likely nominee for the Best Actress Oscar, though it has seemed like a stretch to give her an edge over perennial favorite Emma Stone or the intensity of Hudson’s fellow sorta-musical star Amanda Seyfried, still possibly in the mix for The Testament of Ann Lee (though not nominated at the Actor Awards). Bugonia and Ann Lee are bolder artistic swings than Song Sung Blue, where Hudson plays Claire Sardina, who chases her dreams of singing for a living by forming a Neil Diamond cover band with her eventual husband Mike (Hugh Jackman).
Hudson would probably have been boosted even further if Song Sung Blue had been a holiday hit. Instead, it has yet to rise further than sixth place at the box office, where it sat on Christmas and New Year’s Eve. The rest of the time, it’s been chilling around eighth, seemingly losing some of the adult audience to The Housemaid and Marty Supreme. Then again, maybe it’s not smart to count out a Hugh Jackman musical released around Christmas. Jackman’s The Greatest Showman posted some underwhelming early numbers before word of mouth carried it to a stunning $430 million worldwide.
At this point in its run, Greatest Showman had made twice as much as Song Sung Blue has, so a secret smash may not be in the cards for the latter. Yet Song Sung Blue does appear to be a crowdpleaser, with a small second-weekend drop and an “A” CinemaScore from opening-night audiences. Of the five movies nominated in the Best Actress category, it’s comfortably the second-most-seen after One Battle After Another.
The film is the work of director Craig Brewer, who has seemingly made it his life’s work to find new ways into contemporary, non-integrated musicals, where the characters are actually singing in something resembling real life (rather than breaking out into production numbers). Hustle & Flow followed a striving rapper, Footloose remade the 1980s dance musical with surprisingly high spirits, and now Song Sung Blue makes a case that a potentially cheesy cover band can, in their own specific way, spread just as much musical magic as the genuine article.
This is very much Jackman’s wheelhouse; he’s probably Hollywood’s single most popular song-and-dance man, selling his brand of showmanship in movie musicals (Greatest Showman, Les Miserables), on Broadway, and in occasional hosting gigs. The whole movie seems tailor-made for his reverence and possession of stage presence. Hudson, though, has dabbled in music through her film career as well. She had her big breakthrough (and only Oscar nomination so far) as Penny Lane, the head “Band Aid” from Almost Famous; she memorably-for-the-wrong-reasons sang an original song for the film adaptation of the musical Nine; a climactic rom-com scene has her singing “You’re So Vain” (albeit badly). And in 2024, she released a pop album with no connection to a movie.
That alone makes her a more successful musician than Claire Sardina – though not necessarily a better one. In Brewer’s telling of this reality-based story, Claire’s zeal for performing inspires Mike to ditch his shapeshifting covers act and dedicate himself to the specific art of Neil Diamond “interpretation,” as Claire puts it. Neither of them feels like a real musical act until they perform together. It’s that union, rather than an insistence on singing their own songs, that allows them to transcend their bar-circuit origins.
Hudson has been plucked from the movie to serve as its longshot awards ambassador in large part because Claire is the character who gets to visibly suffer through the back half of Song Sung Blue, after a terrible accident leaves her unable to perform with the same vigor and enthusiasm. Like so many more famous singers before her, she has to kick some bad habits and claw her way back, and Brewer does a canny job of putting Jackman and Hudson through the beats of a typical musician biopic, only in the fresh context of two people who never actually become famous pop stars.
In fact, as much as Hudson’s work threatens to look a little sappy or lightweight next to performances from Jessie Buckley, Rose Byrne, or Emma Stone, this feels like exactly the type of movie that might have easily cruised to a Best Actress nomination 20 or 30 years ago, for a number of reasons. One, admittedly, is that the field was less competitive then; some years, it felt like the Academy was scraping to find performances it deemed acceptable. (Worthy performances have always been there, but perhaps not where the Oscars were looking.) But there was also more of an appetite for big-studio regular-folk dramas somewhere on the spectrum of weepie to crowdpleaser. Think of the nominations for Julia Roberts (Pretty Woman), Bette Midler (For the Boys), or Susan Sarandon (The Client). For the Boys wasn’t even a hit!
Song Sung Blue, in the meantime, could still potentially eke out $50 million or so in North America – especially if Hudson continues to receive awards attention. It’s worth noting that Song Sung is a Focus Features release, a distributor that has had quite good luck over the last few years getting their stars props from the Academy, including Isabella Rossellini for Conclave in 2025, and eventual Oscar winner DaVine Joy Randoph for The Holdovers in 2024.
And while Hudson wouldn’t make my personal top five in the Best Actress category, there’s something invigorating about the idea that she might wrest one spot back for the kind of middlebrow, older-skewing movie that audiences have lately insisted on seeing via streaming rather than theaters. Song Sung Blue undoubtedly works better on a big screen; it’s the kind of picture that’s easier to get swept up in with a big sound system and an environment that otherwise mimics the venues its characters spend so much time in. The easiest way for Hudson to get an Oscar nomination probably would have been to pursue one of those actual musical biopics and imitate a famous singer. That she might get one for playing Claire Sardina feels very much in that character’s spirit.
Jesse Hassenger (@rockmarooned) is a writer living in Brooklyn. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Week, among others. He podcasts at www.sportsalcohol.com, too.
