Every Oscar season is special for me, but this one takes on a new dimension. After 14 years of predicting the Academy Awards with only data and statistics, this happens to mark the first Oscar season I got to enjoy as a new dad.
Was it my best parenting decision that the very first movie I exposed my baby to was The Substance? Perhaps not! Happily, at just five months old, he slept soundly on my lap through the whole thing and came out none the wiser. And even if he’s not quite at the age where we can discuss the film together afterwards, I feel a whole new excitement for watching future cinema and rewatching old classics.
But that’s all years down the road. In the here and now, we’ve got an Oscar race to predict! My model includes industry awards, which other categories a film is nominated in, critics scores, betting markets, and other miscellaneous data. In each category, the model determines how correlated the predictor has been with the Oscars in the past — with gradually less reliance on older years, due to the changing makeup of voting bodies — and that leads to a series of weights which are then applied to this year’s Oscar data and nominees list.
The purpose of including the betting markets is to try and capture any factors — such as late-breaking news — that might be on Oscar voters’ minds but not already accounted for by the voters from earlier award shows. In almost all cases, the betting odds merely confirm what the rest of the model already knew. But every now and then, in a particularly tight race, these markets can sway the model enough to flip who the favorite is.
When all is said and done, we arrive at a series of probabilities, one for each nominee, on their chances of winning the race. And in an Oscar season as topsy-turvy as this one, that’s all any nominee has: a chance. Probabilities provide no guarantees.
Best Picture
In the main event, the math says that Anora is just barely ahead of a coin flip’s chance to win best picture. That’s perhaps a bit higher than some might suspect. Yes, it’s partly due to a string of impressive wins for Anora, including a mega-weekend of Critics Choice, Producers Guild, and Directors Guild honors.
But it’s as much about the flaws in the other films’ Oscar resumes: Conclave reached second place by virtue of BAFTA and SAG wins, but would need to become the 7th film in 97 years to win without a directing nomination. The Brutalist won the Golden Globe for best drama, but would need to become the first best picture winner ever to overcome a lack of both a SAG ensemble and Eddie nomination. Emilia Pérez took the other top Golden Globe honor, but is understandably getting crushed in the betting markets, one factor in this model. A Complete Unknown got plenty of nominations but never won a significant best picture award all season long.
Best Director
Sean Baker (Anora) and Brady Corbet (The Brutalist) are neck-and-neck, having each won a healthy dose of honors for their direction throughout awards season. But not all wins are created equal. In particular, the Directors Guild’s predictions of best director enjoy a stronger track record than any other predictor in any category: only three DGA winners in the last half-century were nominated at the Oscars but lost. That slightly tips the scales towards DGA winner Baker, but with a hefty dose of uncertainty.
Best Actor
At the 11th hour, the Screen Actors Guild made this a race. Adrien Brody (The Brutalist) appeared to be comfortably on his way to a second Oscar win. Then Timothée Chalamet (A Complete Unknown) finally got that major win he’d been looking for on Sunday night. The model still prefers Brody, but this contest suddenly has genuine upset potential.
Best Actress
Best actress is neither an open-and-shut case nor a true neck-and-neck race. Demi Moore (The Substance) and Mikey Madison (Anora) went head-to-head at the Golden Globes, Critics Choice Awards, and Screen Actors Guild, and Moore swept all three. That’s enough for the model to call her the favorite, albeit less than any of the other acting frontrunners, but still at a respectable 52 percent. Madison’s signature win, the BAFTA honor, vaults her into second place at 22 percent. Looking for a bolder choice in your Oscar pool? Fernanda Torres (I’m Still Here) is hardly out of this event at 14 percent.
Best Supporting Actor
Unlike the lead acting categories, this year’s supporting categories are more straightforward. Yes, it’s always possible to see an upset: 87.7 percent is not 100 percent! But make no mistake about it, Kieran Culkin (A Real Pain) dominated awards season and is a strong frontrunner to cap it off with an Oscar.
Best Supporting Actress
There’s a theory out there that the controversy surrounding Karla Sofía Gascón could drag down her Emilia Pérez co-star, Zoe Saldaña. Tell that to the voters of the BAFTAs and the Screen Actors Guild, not to mention earlier award shows like the Golden Globes and the Critics Choice Awards. There are limits to what a mathematical model can bake in, but based on the data it does have, Saldaña has an almost a 9-in-10 chance to take this trophy.
Best Original Screenplay
Sean Baker’s script for Anora is a popular pick here, but at just 40.5 percent to win, there’s a 3-in-5 chance we see an upset. Anora’s strongest point on the resume is a Writers Guild win over A Real Pain, coming at a ceremony in which the other three Oscar competitors were ineligible. Throw in a Critics Choice win for The Substance, a BAFTA win for A Real Pain, and the Golden Globes honoring a script on the adapted side instead, and it all makes for one of the year’s most nail-biting races.
Best Adapted Screenplay
In recent years, the Academy loves honoring directors in the screenplay category. It’s been 14 years since the last original screenplay winner that didn’t include the film’s director among the list of nominated scribes, and 7 years on the adapted screenplay side. At least in the adapted race, that streak might finally come to an end, thanks to Peter Straughan’s thrilling adaptation of Robert Harris’ novel Conclave.
Best Animated Feature
Chris Sanders (The Wild Robot) earned his fourth nomination in this category, tied for the most all-time, but is still looking for his first win. The math gives him just above a coin toss’ chance to do so at 55 percent. But don’t count out Flow – which joined Flee as the only movies in history nominated for animated feature and international feature – or BAFTA winner Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl.
Best Documentary Feature
This category has relatively few reliable predictors compared to the others on the list. Making matters more difficult, many of the predictors we do have opted for titles like Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story and Will & Harper, which were left off the Academy’s top five. What we’re left with is a category where every nominee is above 1-in-10 to win, but no nominee reaches 1-in-3.
Best International Feature
What a race this has been. On paper, Emilia Pérez stormed out to a big lead, fueled by its 13 nominations that eclipsed Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’s and Roma’s record of 10 nominations for an international film. But then the controversies started: First and foremost were Karla Sofía Gascón’s tweets, but also the sharply diverging opinions between critics (72 percent on Rotten Tomatoes) and audiences (16 percent). In the first year in Oscar history with two best picture contenders in this field, that might be enough for I’m Still Here to come from behind, even if it’s difficult for the model to fully account for this narrative.
Best Production Design
Nathan Crowley and Lee Sandales are a combined 0-for-8 at prior Oscar ceremonies, but this might just be their year, thanks to their visually stunning recreation of Oz for Wicked. The math is higher than most on Nosferatu due in large part to its win at the Art Directors Guild Awards in the period film category, but given that Wicked took the fantasy trophy and a host of other awards season honors, it’s still the movie to beat.
Best Cinematography
Best cinematography may be a much closer race than some are giving it credit for. The Brutalist’s BAFTA honor and the betting markets barely put it into first place, but plenty of critic honors leaned towards Nosferatu, which is a significantly stronger contender than you’d glean from the relative lack of people predicting it to win. Dune already won this race for its first installment and could still do so again, while Maria won the American Society of Cinematographers on Sunday night, so upset possibilities abound.
Best Film Editing
This has all the ingredients of a confounding category to those of us in the Oscar predictions business. Challengers claimed multiple precursor awards without getting an Oscar nomination. The American Cinema Editors’ Eddie Awards were understandably delayed until after the Academy Awards due to the fires in L.A. Three of the strongest best picture contenders seem to be in the top three here as well. Ultimately, the math weakly points towards BAFTA winner Conclave, as no BAFTA winner nominated in this category has lost the Oscar since Vice (2018).
