'One Battle After Another,' 'Sinners,' 'Hamnet,' 'Marty Supreme,' 'Frankenstein' and 'Sentimental Value' lead Ben Zauzmer's math model in the Oscar best picture race. Everett Share on Facebook Share on X Google Preferred Share to Flipboard Send an Email Show additional share options Share on Reddit Post a Comment Share on Whats App Share on Pinterest Share on LinkedIn Print the Article Share on Tumblr It might feel as if this year's best picture race was over before it began. Paul Thomas Anderson's One Battle After Another earned top honors from the Critics Choice, the Golden Globes, and a host of critic circles, not to mention key nominations from the Directors Guild, Producers Guild, Screen Actors Guild, and many others. But before tuning out of this year's race, and this 13th annual mathematical prediction of the Oscars nominees, keep in mind that all of the following films notched every single honor mentioned in the previous paragraph: Sense and Sensibility, Saving Private Ryan, Sideways, Brokeback Mountain, The Social Network, Boyhood, and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. None of them won best picture at the Oscars. In truth, what One Battle has is not a guarantee but a probability. What probability, exactly? That's where I come in. We'll get to the odds of winning each category in March, but for now, we can calculate the odds that every potential nominee gets invited to the ceremony. My model combines all of the information we have on awards season thus far - weighting each input by how predictive it has been in the past in each category - to give us a sense of the race. Since the Academy expanded to 10 best picture nominees, an average of 9/10 of the top candidates in this model went on to hear their name called; we'll see how this year's probabilities do. Best Picture Image Credit: Everett One Battle After Another is clearly the film to beat, and Sinners, Hamnet, Marty Supreme, and Frankenstein are the contenders who appear to be most up to the task. All five should almost certainly hear their name called with nominees are announced, with Sentimental Value and Train Dreams also good bets to join that list. From there, it gets tougher to predict. It Was Just an Accident has a 2-in-3 chance, and Bugonia is just over 1-in-2. No other film even reaches 1-in-3, meaning that at least one candidate will have to beat the odds to slip into the most coveted category of them all. window.addEventListener("message",function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r,i=0;r=e[i];i++)if(r.contentWindow===a.source){var d=a.data["datawrapper-height"][t]+"px";r.style.height=d}}}); Best Director Image Credit: Everett It's been one award after another for Paul Thomas Anderson (One Battle After Another), making him and Ryan Coogler (Sinners) virtual locks to get nominated. A former winner in this category, Chloé Zhao (Hamnet), is also a strong contender here. After that, we have four names between 34 percent and 63 percent, and short of a major surprise, we should expect to see two get in and two left out from this quartet. The Directors Guild opted for Josh Safdie (Marty Supreme) and Guillermo del Toro (Frankenstein), but the model is leaning slightly in favor of Jafar Panahi (It Was Just an Accident) as the threat of an Iranian prison sentence hangs over him. window.addEventListener("message",function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r,i=0;r=e[i];i++)if(r.contentWindow===a.source){var d=a.data["datawrapper-height"][t]+"px";r.style.height=d}}}); Best Actor Image Credit: Everett It's pretty rare to see this much cohesion among disparate critic groups, but there's been a strong consensus in the data around the top five: Michael B. Jordan (Sinners), Leonardo DiCaprio (One Battle After Another), Timothée Chalamet (Marty Supreme), Wagner Moura (The Secret Agent), and Ethan Hawke (Blue Moon). Perhaps the exception is Moura getting left out of an Actor Award ceremony that overlooked a number of foreign performances, but he made up for it with a Golden Globe win. If an upset is going to emerge on the nominations list, look to Joel Edgerton (Train Dreams) or Jesse Plemons (Bugonia) as the most likely beneficiaries. window.addEventListener("message",function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r,i=0;r=e[i];i++)if(r.contentWindow===a.source){var d=a.data["datawrapper-height"][t]+"px";r.style.height=d}}}); Best Actress Image Credit: Everett The two Golden Globe winners - Jessie Buckley (Hamnet) and Rose Byrne (If I Had Legs I'd Kick You) - are clearly on top. Next up: A pair of actresses at opposite ends of the career spectrum - Chase Infiniti (One Battle After Another) making her film debut, and Emma Stone (Bugonia) with two Oscars alrea