This very strange awards season only got weirder, and more entertaining, with the recent implosion of the “Emilia Perez” campaign, for which Netflix spent anywhere between $30M-$40M. It’s certainly not winning Best Picture.
Firstly, the 10 nominees: “Anora,” “The Brutalist,” “Conclave,” “Emilia Perez,” “Dune: Part II,” “A Complete Unknown,” “Wicked,” “The Substance,” “I’m Still Here,” and “Nickel Boys”
Which of these titles has the best shot at winning? None of them are a slam dunk like last year’s “Oppenheimer,” which was the frontrunner to win months before the Oscar ceremony even happened. Recently, THR theorized that it was a six-way race, and they might be right. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like this before.
Yes, unlike other years, we don’t really have a frontrunner. I tend to visit the Gold Derby charts, which tallies up Oscar “experts” predictions and comes up with an aggregated list fit for “consensus, and this year the #1 spot seems to be changing every week. Currently, Brady Corbet’s “The Brutalist” sits at the top. Is a 3.5 hour arthouse epic our frontrunner?
Then you have Variety with their own shock prediction: James Mangold’s “A Complete Unknown” will win Best Picture. It’s not the first time I’ve seen or read someone predicting ‘Complete Unknown’ to win. It’s an immensely likable film, and the industry has clearly been taken by it — the DGA and SAG nominations prove that.
It should be noted that the best picture category employs ranked-choice voting (also known as preferential voting). Voters order the nominees by preference; if one movie comes away with more than 50% of the first-place votes in the first round, that's the winner. A polarizing film cannot win with the preferential ballot in place.
Preferential voting is why ‘A Complete Unknown’ could win. Personally, I have Edward Berger’s “Conclave” as my #1 — it’s the safest choice. There aren’t many who actually “hate” Berger’s film, and that’s something that needs to be paid attention to in the “preferential” Oscar era.
Suffice to say, it’s all up in the air. We’re going to have to wait until the best precursor, the Producers Guild of America, announces its winner, and even then it won’t be a done deal. The race is too tight to call, and there’s no clear path for any of the nominees.