Predictions for the 2023 Oscars
The Academy Awards return once again this weekend – while our predictions can’t quite capture the literal on-screen drama that happened last year, we’ve re-ran our model to see how the nominees are stacking up.
Predicting film awards is a tricky task, and many different factors – not least a film’s quality! – end up affecting voting behaviour. We use a points-based system which tracks the performance of each nominee across the awards season to assess their chances at the Oscars.
In our model, each award is allocated points based on how closely their winners have correlated with the Oscars over the past twenty years; a nomination is worth a fifth of the points for a win. Assuming that the voting bodies of each award, and their voting tendencies, remain broadly consistent, then past agreement with the Oscars should be a good indicator of the nominees’ chances of winning this weekend.
The charts set out over the following pages show our model’s cumulative points total for each nominee as this year’s awards have been allocated. We’ve also compared the current nominees’ results to those of the past eight winners to gauge where they need to be at this stage to be in contention, and drawn out where our ‘points leaders’ might be upset by another nominee and why.
Our model correctly predicted eight out of nine categories last year, with the big surprise coming in Apple TV+’s CODA beating out bigger names for Best Picture. Similarly, this year has so far seen traditional heavy-hitting awards bait faring worse than popular emerging contenders in many key categories. However, as some major awards continue to diverge from the Oscars (especially the BAFTAs voting body who, in true British style, can’t resist a war film), whether these results carry though to this weekend remains to be seen…
best picture
Heading into this weekend’s Academy Awards there is a clear frontrunner in A24’s Everything Everywhere All at Once – what looked like a four-way race back in early January with Tár, The Banshees of Inisherin and The Fabelmans quickly closing up after major wins for Everything Everywhere at the Critics’ Choice, DGAs, SAGs, and PGAs. Its early release in 2022 clearly hasn’t held it back (traditionally the later you release, the better) with voters potentially getting used to new distribution models. Everything Everywhere may have also benefitted from awards’ shifting their attention to more popular mainstream films to maintain relevance, having delivered the best received multiversal story so far – a trend which has taken over blockbuster franchises. However, following last year’s upset anything is possible, and even Tom Cruise is in the picture having ‘saved cinema’ this summer with Top Gun: Maverick.
Prediction: Everything Everywhere All at Once
2. Best Director
The directing duo Daniels, made up of Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, are the favourites to take home Best Director on their first nomination for their maximalist Action-Comedy-Sci-fi-Drama Everything Everywhere all At Once. While our model has them as a clear favourite, other nominees may still have a fighting chance. Todd Field has been a critics favourite, winning at various Critics Circle awards for his complex character study Tár, yet has failed to win any major awards later in the season. One can also never count out Steven Spielberg, this is Spielberg’s 9th Best Director nomination, and his second in as many years; having won twice already may reduce his chances, but it remains possible that US voters may reward one of the most iconic US names for his most personal work yet.
Prediction: Daniels
3. best actor & actress
Best Actor seems to be a true three-way race involving Colin Farrell, Brenden Fraser and Austin Butler going into this weekend, with our model having Fraser as the slight favourite. For much of the early season Colin Farrell’s equally devastating and hilarious turn as the dull but ‘nice’ Pádraic, seemed set to win. However recent major awards have seen him overtaken by both Fraser and Butler. A win for 90s and 00s blockbuster icon, Fraser, nominated for his performance in The Whale, would be the culmination of the beloved actor’s meteoric comeback (a story that fans and the industry alike would lap up). On the other hand, a win for former Disney star Austin Butler, for his (somewhat permanent!) transformation as Elvis, would be an announcement of a new leading man.
In contrast, Cate Blanchett appears to be on track to take home the Best Actress statue on Sunday night for her performance as maestro Lydia Tár, a win on Sunday would be the third Academy Award for the Australian actress. However, a late win at the SAGs for Michelle Yeoh places the actress in striking distance of Blanchett. Yeoh’s win at the SAGs made her the first Asian woman to win the award in the ceremony’s history, if she wins at the Oscars she would complete a similar feat. Yet the story of who wasn’t nominated for Best Actress has perhaps grabbed the most attention this year. According to our model, both Danielle Deadwyler and Viola Davis have accumulated more points over this awards season than the other three nominees who made the list.
Prediction (Best Actress): Cate Blanchett
Prediction (Best Actor): Brendan Fraser
4. best supporting actor & actress
Supporting Actor has a clear favourite in Ke Huy Quan. While his performance is in Everything Everywhere is undeniable we must give credit to Quan’s consistently wonderful performance on the awards circuit itself, with his emotional speeches being the highlight of both the Golden Globes and the SAGs. After seeing these speeches there is no doubt that academy members will vote to give the opportunity to deliver another all time speech Sunday night.
Meanwhile, Supporting Actress is a different story, with no clear frontrunner and none of this years names reaching the minimum points total of recent winners. Angela Bassett is nevertheless the favourite with wins at both the Golden Globes and Critics Choice giving her an early lead, and the Academy probably keen to reward a popular Marvel blockbuster. Conversely though Jamie Lee Curtis and Kerry Condon have the momentum, picking up major wins late in the season.
Prediction (Best Supporting Actor): Ke Huy Quan
Prediction (Best Supporting Actress): Angela Bassett
5. best documentary
This year’s Best Documentary race is a relatively open field with five nominees showcasing the range of high-quality theatrical documentaries being made, at a time when true-crime series are dominating documentary viewing on TV screens. The two frontrunners All the Beauty and the Bloodshed and Navalny are both highly political, taking on the opioid epidemic and Russian politics (and of course the implications on the invasion of Ukraine, also the background behind another nominee A House Made of Splinters); the former is ahead in our model after success with critics, but Navalny has momentum and should likely be considered the favourite. Oscar voters have historically favoured lighter, more accessible docs (e.g. My Octopus Teacher winning over Time) which may benefit Fire of Love, a crowd-pleasing tale of two volcanologists in-love, but this year will probably be defined by political sentiment.
Prediction: All the Beauty and the Bloodshed
6. Best animated feature film
While Best Picture continues to elude Netflix, their odds in Animated look good this year with Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio sweeping the awards so far and staking its place as the best of three major Pinocchio adaptations in as many years (though Matteo Garrone’s version still holds onto the unique distinction of most realistic human-tuna ever put on screen!). Netflix also has a second nominee, The Sea Beast, in a further sign of voting bodies warming to SVOD releases. Marcel the Shell… and Turning Red could cause an upset, but the lack of true animated blockbusters which usually fill up this list may be reflective of big family films being slower to return to cinemas post-pandemic.
Prediction: Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio
7. best international feature film
A consistent opinion on best foreign-language film rarely forms across the awards season and this year is no different. Both Decision To Leave and RRR failed to secure nominations despite success elsewhere; their omission even more surprising given the popularity of Korean content right now and the global word-of-mouth around RRR. The three evenly-matched frontrunners out of the nominees – Argentina, 1985, Close, and All Quiet on the Western Front (all above the points total of some recent Oscar winners) – present voters with three very different choices, from a legal thriller to a heartfelt childhood drama and a grisly war epic. While Argentina, 1985 is slightly in front in our model after early award wins, the producers of All Quiet on the Western Front should be more confident following their huge night at the BAFTAs and as the only non-English film to also be nominated for Best Picture.
Prediction: Argentina, 1985
