Barbie‘s director Greta Gerwig and leading lady Margot Robbie have been sensationally snubbed in this year’s Oscar nominations, as box office rival Oppenheimer scooped the pool.

Gerwig failed to get a nod for best director for the highest grossing film of 2023, while Australia’s Robbie missed out in the Best Actress category.

In another surprise, voters snubbed Leonardo DiCaprio, star of Killers of the Flower Moon.

However Robbie was still nominated as a producer in the best picture line-up and Gerwig was nominated for the adapted screenplay prize alongside her husband and fellow screenwriter Noah Baumbach.

Historical epic Oppenheimer, about the race to build the first atomic bomb, landed a leading 13 Oscar nominations and will compete for the prestigious best picture trophy.

Oppenheimer outpaced gothic comedy Poor Things, which received 11 nominations for the film industry’s highest honours.

Barbie landed eight nominations including a supporting actress nod for America Ferrera and best picture.

Also in the best picture race were Leonard Bernstein biopic Maestro and Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon about the murders of members of the Osage Nation in Oklahoma in the 1920s.

Rounding out the field of 10 were American Fiction, Anatomy of a Fall, The Holdovers, Past Lives and The Zone of Interest.

Bradley Cooper also was left off the best director list for Maestro, although he was nominated for best actor for starring in the film as composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein.

His competitors include Cillian Murphy, who played scientist J Robert Oppenheimer.

For best original song, Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt were nominated for I’m Just Ken from Barbie, alongside sibling song-writing duo Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell for What Was I Made For? from the same film.

Nominations for the 96th Oscars were announced on Tuesday (US time) by Atlanta star Zazie Beetz and The Boys actor Jack Quaid.

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Winners will be chosen by the roughly 11,000 actors, producers, directors and film craftspeople who make up the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

The golden statuettes will be handed out at a Hollywood ceremony broadcast live on Walt Disney’s ABC on March 10.

Talk show host Jimmy Kimmel will return as host.