Hello, and welcome to Part Two of our grand Oscar predictions breakdown! If you missed Part One on Wednesday, CHECK IT OUT HERE. In Part One we covered all the shorts and craft categories, as well as original song, animated feature, documentary feature, and international feature.
Now we’re back with the top eight categories, and what a top eight it is. Four of these seem pretty well sewn up, but the other four are among the most difficult-to-predict major categories in recent memory, including a Best Picture race that’s wildly up in the air. I’ve been playing at guessing the vote totals for the Best Picture nominees for five years, and I’ve never felt like I had less of a handle on what the starting numbers might look like. Of course I can never know how right or wrong I am with the numbers—because god forbid the Oscars do the coolest thing ever and reveal the vote totals—but this year I could be really, really wrong. And with that vote of self-confidence as our guide, let’s get to it.
Best Adapted Screenplay
CODA (Siân Heder)
Drive My Car (Ryûsuke Hamaguchi & Takamasa Oe)
Dune (Denis Villeneuve, Jon Spaihts, and Eric Roth)
The Lost Daughter (Maggie Gyllenhaal)
The Power of the Dog (Jane Campion)
One of the most difficult categories on the board, partially because of how much it seems to portend the Best Picture results. Beyond Dune, you can pretty easily talk yourself into any of the other four nominees. Drive My Car arguably did the most actual adaptation, transforming a short story into a three-hour epic of the human condition, while The Lost Daughter has won several precursors, including the coveted USC Scripter Award (which has a substantial history of predicting this category).
But most believe this is down to the two alleged Best Picture frontrunners, CODA and The Power of the Dog. I expect CODA to win for two reasons. First, the art-house minded voters have three films to choose from (Drive My Car, The Lost Daughter, and The Power of the Dog)—and there’s reason to believe all three will rack up significant support. CODA, meanwhile, should completely devour the populist vote. But perhaps even more importantly, because Jane Campion is considered such a sure thing for Best Director, voters might want to spread the love and vote for CODA here, ensuring both female writer/directors go home with an Oscar, regardless of the Best Picture result.
Best Original Screenplay
Belfast (Kenneth Branagh)
Don’t Look Up (Adam McKay & David Sirota)
King Richard (Zach Baylin)
Licorice Pizza (Paul Thomas Anderson)
The Worst Person in the World (Joachim Trier & Eskil Vogt)
Another beguiling category where you can talk yourself into nearly any result. First thing’s first, let’s cross Don’t Look Up off the list, and No, I don’t care that it won the WGA Award. The guilds are massive and trend toward more populist, basic taste, and something as slap-you-in-the-face obvious as Don’t Look Up would always fare better in that competition than a weird hang-out script by an auteur like Paul Thomas Anderson.
After that, it gets mighty difficult. If you think either Belfast or King Richard have any legit upset potential for Best Picture, then you should definitely pick them here. But I don’t, so I’m not. Instead I think it’s between Licorice Pizza (the presumed frontrunner) and The Worst Person in the World (the surging longshot). There are two key questions to answer: (1) How many voters love Licorice Pizza, versus how many voters just think Paul Thomas Anderson should have an Oscar? And (2) How many voters actually watched The Worst Person in the World?
I’m actually pretty suspicious of how many voters loved Licorice Pizza, and I worry that a major reason Anderson doesn’t have an Oscar yet is because directors and writers are the only two Academy branches that really adore his films. (That’s not a knock; I love PTA.) I’m also suspicious of whether PTA can win mostly on the back of a “He’s due” narrative, because the new, younger, more diverse Academy seems to mostly reject that type of thinking. And, just to make this fun, I’m also suspicious that enough voters have seen the Worst Person in the World. But something’s gotta give, and I have to pick a suspicion to ignore.
Full disclosure, The Worst Person in the World is my favorite film of the year, so listen to me at your own peril here, but I just have this feeling that voters are watching it and falling for it. I’m blinded by my total inability to not imagine it winning over people left and right. Every year, there’s one category where I just can’t talk myself out of picking my favorite, and this year, Best Original Screenplay is that category, and The Worst Person in the World is that favorite. Lock it in.
Best Supporting Actor
Ciarán Hinds (Belfast)
Troy Kotsur (CODA)
Jesse Plemons (The Power of the Dog)
J.K. Simmons (Being the Ricardos)
Kodi Smit-McPhee (The Power of the Dog)
The easiest category of the year, and one of the only true locks on the board. Troy Kotsur has been leaving a trail of bodies this entire awards season, and there’s simply no reason to believe he won’t also win here. CODA is tremendously well-liked, and Troy Kotsur gives a performance that just moves and amuses the hell out of everyone who sees it. He’s the epitome of what a supporting actor should bring to a movie.
Best Supporting Actress
Jessie Buckley (The Lost Daughter)
Ariana DeBose (West Side Story)
Judi Dench (Belfast)
Kirsten Dunst (The Power of the Dog)
Aunjanue Ellis (King Richard)
Like Troy Kotsur, Ariana DeBose has been crushing every obstacle in her path, so her recreation of West Side Story’s Anita (the role that won Rita Moreno an Oscar in the 1961 original) would seem to be just as much of a lock. And it is, probably. But there’s a small part of me that likes Kirsten Dunst’s odds for an upset. One of the biggest questions of this Oscar season is exactly how much voters love The Power of the Dog, and that elusive answer is going to reveal itself in several different categories, either with a few surprise wins or a streak of losses. If you think The Power of the Dog is winning Best Picture, it will almost certainly score an upset win or two somewhere, and this is one of the categories where that’s at least conceivable. But I’m placing my Power of the Dog upset bets on Editing and Score, and playing it safe with Ariana DeBose here.
Best Actor
Javier Bardem (Being the Ricardos)
Benedict Cumberbatch (The Power of the Dog)
Andrew Garfield (Tick, Tick…BOOM!)
Will Smith (King Richard)
Denzel Washington (The Tragedy of Macbeth)
Like Best Supporting Actress, Best Actor is another category that’s seemingly sewn up, but has at least an outside chance for a Power of the Dog upset bid. Will Smith is fantastic in King Richard, and if/when he wins, it’ll be about the strength of his performance, not the narrative of one of the world’s biggest movie stars finally winning an Oscar. But having said that, there’s still a chance that voters just might like Benedict Cumberbatch’s performance even better. I don’t think that’ll happen, which is probably a good thing. No matter how circumstantial it all is, a White actor pulling out a shocking win over a heavily favored Black frontrunner two years in a row would be a bad look for the Oscars. But even though I’m confidently predicting Will Smith to win, this race could be a lot closer than most people believe.
Best Actress
Jessica Chastain (The Eyes of Tammy Faye)
Olivia Colman (The Lost Daughter)
Penélope Cruz (Parallel Mothers)
Nicole Kidman (Being the Ricardos)
Kristen Stewart (Spencer)
Welcome to the year’s most chaotic Oscar category! How chaotic, you ask? So chaotic that the five nominees above had ZERO overlap with the six BAFTA nominees. Needless to say, that ain’t never happened before.
So where do we even start with a category that’s been all over the place for the entirety of awards season? With Nicole Kidman, our easiest cut. If an actress as popular as her, playing someone as legendary as Lucille Ball, in a movie as unchallenging as Being the Ricardos, can’t win with a massively populist guild like SAG, then I don’t see how she has a chance with the Academy.
Our second cut: Kristen Stewart. Fair or unfair, one of the biggest revelations of this awards season seems to be that no one liked Spencer other than critics (and this critic wasn’t really into it, either). It’s just too difficult to imagine a voting body that’s still mostly American, and which didn’t nominate Spencer in any other category, voting in droves for Stewart’s performance as Princess Diana.
Now it gets difficult. Ever since Jessica Chastain won the SAG Award, she’s been the presumptive favorite. And to that I say: Why? Why does anyone take one precursor win as gospel? As mentioned many times, the guilds all run populist, Jessica Chastain is a movie star, and The Eyes of Tammy Faye is a simple movie with a “most acting” take on what great acting is. But what does Chastain’s win there have to do with the Oscars?
To be clear, I’m in no way saying Chastain can’t or won’t win the Oscar. She might! But her SAG win is a bad reason to predict her here, and I haven’t thought of a good reason other than how much her performance reminds me of Renée Zellweger’s win for 2019’s Judy. Instead, I would look to Colman or Cruz, two internationally beloved actresses giving subtle, heart-wrenching performances in films more likely to be enjoyed and appreciated by Academy voters. While anything can happen in this category, I would be genuinely surprised if Colman or Cruz isn’t the winner.
Oh, what’s that you say? I have to actually pick one of them? Yikes. I don’t know. I’ve changed my mind about this a dozen times in the last two months (including again since I started typing this sentence), but I guess I’ll take Penélope Cruz, if only because I watched The Lost Daughter with my dad and came to the quick and sad conclusion that older men (which is most of the Academy) aren’t gonna have an easy time with that one. Parallel Mothers, on the other hand, is by a revered filmmaker, and it relies far more on plot than on the interiority of a difficult-to-like female character.
Best Director
Paul Thomas Anderson (Licorice Pizza)
Kenneth Branagh (Belfast)
Jane Campion (The Power of the Dog)
Ryûsuke Hamaguchi (Drive My Car)
Steven Spielberg (West Side Story)
Another fairly easy category! The three films with the best chance to win Best Picture (or so I think) are CODA, Dune, and The Power of the Dog, and two of those films aren’t represented in this category. That makes Jane Campion a pretty obvious pick, and helming the film with the most total nominations certainly helps her case. I will say, though, that a shocking Spielberg win isn’t out of the realm of possibility. There’s been a whole lot of Spielberg love-festing going on this awards season (all of it merited, of course), and he’s officially reached the point where winning a third Best Director Oscar doesn’t seem at all far-fetched. Like Tom Hanks, Spielberg is starting to feel criminally underappreciated by awards bodies since the ‘90s ended, and I don’t see that status quo staying in place forever. But in all likelihood, Jane Campion is taking this home.
Best Picture
Belfast
CODA
Don’t Look Up
Drive My Car
Dune
King Richard
Licorice Pizza
Nightmare Alley
The Power of the Dog
West Side Story
First, a refresher on how the preferential ballot works: Voters are asked to rank all ten nominees (though some voters only rank a few of them, because following instructions is hard). The goal is for one film to end up with over 50% of the first-place votes. Assuming that doesn’t happen upon the initial tally (which is virtually impossible), an elimination process begins. The film with the fewest first-place votes is eliminated from contention, and all of the ballots that ranked that film first get reallocated to whatever film was ranked second. Assuming no film is at 50% of the first-place votes yet, the process repeats; the film with the fewest first-place votes is eliminated, and the ballots for that film are reallocated to whatever was ranked next highest on them. This process repeats and films are continually eliminated from contention until one has over 50% of the first-place votes.
Before we get into the specifics of how this may play out, there are a few generalities of what we’re kind of looking for. The logic behind the preferential ballot is that the winner will be the film the Academy most agreed on. That means we’re not explicitly measuring passion or consensus, but rather the intersection of both.
For a film to survive the first few elimination rounds, it needs to begin the process with a lot of first-place votes. That means the films that don’t start with many first-place votes can’t win, no matter how many second- or third-place votes they rack up. But after those first few eliminations, we start getting pretty deep into voters’ ballots. Films that voters ranked fourth suddenly morph into first-place votes. At this point the process has changed, and what we’re primarily looking for in these later stages is the film that will be toward the bottom of the fewest number of ballots.
Here’s my best stab on the type of opening vote totals we might get. Keep in mind that (1) this is total conjecture based purely on my sense of each film’s level of support, and (2) before you decry your favorite “only” getting such and such small number, remember that these percentages do have to actually equal 100, and with ten nominees, none of them will start with a huge number.
The Power of the Dog: 22%
CODA: 18%
Dune: 14%
Belfast: 10%
West Side Story: 8%
King Richard: 7%
Drive My Car: 7%
Don’t Look Up: 5%
Nightmare Alley: 5%
Licorice Pizza: 4%
If these totals are right (which they obviously won’t be, but indulge me), then Licorice Pizza is our first cut. So what can we guess about the taste of people who think Licorice Pizza is the best film of the year? Probably that they like indie auteurs, so maybe those votes will get mostly reallocated to the other two films that fit that profile, Drive My Car and The Power of the Dog.
The Power of the Dog: 24%
CODA: 18%
Dune: 14%
Belfast: 10%
Drive My Car: 9%
West Side Story: 8%
King Richard: 7%
Don’t Look Up: 5%
Nightmare Alley: 5%
Now Nightmare Alley is gone, and its votes should heavily favor the other most technically accomplished films in the field, along with some votes going to CODA, which will likely be toward the top of a lot of ballots that don’t rank it first.
The Power of the Dog: 24%
CODA: 19%
Dune: 16%
Belfast: 11%
Drive My Car: 9%
West Side Story: 9%
King Richard: 7%
Don’t Look Up: 5%
Don’t Look Up is our next cut, and that one’s a bit of a mystery. It has a witty script, it has movie stars, and it has a message, but it’s not challenging. So maybe its elimination will yield totals like this.
The Power of the Dog: 24%
CODA: 21%
Dune: 16%
Belfast: 12%
West Side Story: 10%
Drive My Car: 9%
King Richard: 8%
That means King Richard is done, and as a major crowd pleaser, its votes should heavily reallocate to CODA, West Side Story, and Belfast.
CODA: 25%
The Power of the Dog: 24%
Dune: 16%
Belfast: 14%
West Side Story: 12%
Drive My Car: 9%
CODA has now taken the lead, but that won’t last long. With Drive My Car as our next cut, I would expect The Power of the Dog to be the major beneficiary of those votes.
The Power of the Dog: 30%
CODA: 26%
Dune: 16%
Belfast: 15%
West Side Story: 13%
The Power of the Dog has retaken the lead, at least for now. The elimination of West Side Story will likely go pretty evenly toward the four remaining films, because its technical prowess, classical style, and auteur sensibilities should find kinship in every film remaining on the board.
The Power of the Dog: 33%
CODA: 30%
Dune: 19%
Belfast: 18%
And now Belfast, our first front-runner of this Oscar season, has reached the end of the road. Its vote reallocation should give a huge bump to CODA, but also we’re now deep enough into people’s ballots that everything gets a bump.
CODA: 40%
The Power of the Dog: 37%
Dune: 23%
And now here we are, the deciding moment. Before we say goodbye to Dune, let me first say that these are the only three films I think can win Best Picture, and Dune has a much better chance than most people seem to be giving it. But when Dune gets eliminated, its ballot reallocation will push either CODA or The Power of the Dog over the top. And now that we’ve exhausted voters’ rankings, the biggest question here becomes which film was ranked dead last on more ballots?
As weird as it is to think about, any ballot that ranked CODA 9th and The Power of the Dog 10th would become, at this point, a first-place vote for CODA. So which film do more people dislike? Is Netflix bias still a thing? Which film’s alleged greatness angers more voters who just don’t respond to it? Fair or unfair, the answers to those questions might not bode well for The Power of the Dog. So with Dune’s elimination, I think we’ll be looking at final totals in this range:
CODA: 54%
The Power of the Dog: 46%
Even though Netflix has become a giant of the cinematic world, their first Oscar nomination in any major category at all was only four years ago. Netflix bias within the industry is still eroding by the day, and streaming being the new normal is continuing to be, well, normalized. But I don’t think we’re there yet. For as much as the Academy is probably the youngest it’s ever been right now, it is still, broadly speaking, an organization with a pretty old average membership. If you’re a voter in your 80s who started thinking five years ago that Netflix was ruining the American movie business model, I’m dubious about whether that opinion has changed yet.
And yes, CODA was also distributed by a streaming service, but not by the one that created the entire notion of streaming services. And supporting a Netflix competitor might even have a perverse appeal to some ornery old voters who didn’t particularly like either film.
Having said all that, this is the least confident I’ve ever been in a Best Picture prediction, and CODA only getting three total nominations still gives me pause. The most plausible reason for that is simply not enough voters watched it during the nomination phase, and a large swath of the Academy only saw it for the first time in the last six weeks. But another plausible reason is that CODA actually isn’t as broadly loved, across all 17 Academy branches, as pundits seem to think it is. Its nominations and its precursor wins strongly indicate that it’s loved by actors, producers, and writers, but we really have no idea about anyone else. We’re all just assuming that love translates to the other 14 Academy branches.
But, of course, The Power of the Dog is the other side of that equation, and part of CODA’s seeming popularity surge is also about the competition. Even after getting 12 nominations, Dog never sat right with me as the eventual Best Picture winner. I love the film, and it’s in my top five of the year (CODA is in the 8-12 range), but it would be the most purely arthouse Best Picture winner in the history of the Oscars. That’s likely a major factor in why Roma lost to Green Book, so we shouldn’t be too surprised if it happens again.
But before you take that analogy and run with it, No, CODA is not like Green Book (or Crash), and no one should ever make those comparisons again. The problems people have with Green Book and Crash are largely moral and philosophical problems with what those films are saying and how they say it (and, in the case of Green Book, the creators who were doing the talking), on top of any sins of artistry. The people who dislike CODA do so mostly on the grounds that it’s just uninteresting filmmaking. Those are not the same problems.
So, will Netflix ever win Best Picture? Yes, of course they will, and it will almost certainly happen this decade. And where will CODA rank all-time among Best Picture winners? Toward the middle, I would guess. And that’s fine. The taste of Academy voters, generally speaking, keeps getting better, and just in the last several years we’ve gotten two of the greatest Best Picture winners ever in Moonlight and Parasite. But it’s not reasonable to expect an all-timer every year. If we did, there wouldn’t be much to argue about, and that’s what makes the Oscars so much fun.
