Editor’s Note: Before we begin, we’d just like to specify that this article is for entertainment purposes only. Like most things, gambling should be enjoyed responsibly, and if you or a loved one has a gambling problem, there are resources available for you, including the National Problem Gambling Helpline, which can be reached at 1-800-522-4700 at any time of day.
After a pretty nutty ceremony in 2022, last year’s Academy Awards were on point: They were boring as fuck. Everything Everywhere All At Once swept, much like everybody knew it would, and Emerson College now has a top-line pair of graduates to attract prospective film school recruits. To put it plain, it was a great year if you were watching for the feels, surrounded by your extended family, but it was a horrible year if you were looking to make any dough, be it in an Oscar pool or at your favorite Sportsbook. We did OK with our picks, but, again, there’s no fun in just getting everything confirmed – the thrill is the fun bit. This year, things are a little different: Sure, there’s a huge favorite, but there’s also some controversy, some fiery-hot races, and, as such, it’ll likely be a little more fun than last year’s
As a person who openly acknowledges the subjective nature of taste – you, after all, are the only body whose recognition and opinion matters for your own interests and tastes, and no Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences can ever tell you that Babylon or Blonde isn’t worthy of Best Picture – I think the only way to ever truly regard the Oscars is as the LA equivalent of the Kentucky Derby. So break out the mint juleps, put on your best seersucker suit, and grab a betting slip, because we’re about to make bad decisions.
Cue the music:
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Welcome to Vanyaland’s Annual Oscar Gambling Column, where I, your humble film editor, survey the field for the major categories, tally up the odds, and place the nominees into three categories. Favorites go in – duh — The Favorite, no-shot sucker bets go in They Can’t All Be Winners, Kid, and Underdogs that got that dawg in them go in So You’re Saying There’s A Chance. You can use this guide to help you make your pool picks or fill out your slips, but don’t blame me if you decide to stake everything on Maestro’s chances at Oscar glory.
As always, our odds come from DraftKings because we like repping our hometown sportsbook. They are current as of March 5 — always check to make sure the lines haven’t moved before making your picks. And, once again, we’re using American Odds. If, say, Minions 5: Gru’s Colonoscopy is at -5000 odds, that minus symbol means it’s a favorite: You’d have to put $5000 down in order to win $100. Low risk, low reward. If Minions 5 is at +5000 odds, well, that’s a different story: It’s an underdog, and putting down $100 would win you $5000. That sounds great until you remember that you are most likely going to lose that money.
Before we get started, here’s our invocation, delivered by the Patron Saint of Oscar Gambling, Oscar Gamble:
The 96th Academy Awards will air on Sunday (March 10) at 8 p.m. EST on ABC.
Adapted Screenplay
The Favorite: American Fiction (-250), which feels right. Shout out to the dude Percival Everett, one of America’s finest novelists.
They Can’t All Be Winners, Kid: The Zone of Interest (+4000) has barely anything to do with the Martin Amis book that it’s adapted from, and Poor Things (+2000) will likely get awards elsewhere.
So You’re Saying There’s a Chance: Barbieheimer (+500, +200). These are juggernauts – Oppenheimer has straight-ticket voting on its side, but Barbie has scorned-lover energy. Outside of the supporting categories, if there was to be an honorary award given to the film, it’d probably be this one, no matter how angry some commentators might be that it’s even in this category and not Original. Good lord, guys – this is an easier feat.
Original Screenplay
The Favorite: Anatomy of a Fall (-280), and it’s likely the only category where Neon will get any hardware from a narrative feature this year.
They Can’t All Be Winners, Kid: Maestro (+4000) is a movie that works in spite of some of its writing, and Past Lives (+1200) has the critics freaking out, but has flashier titles in front of it. It’s a bummer that May December (+5000) isn’t getting more love – Charles Melton was fucking robbed – but the ick factor is probably a bit too much for your average Oscar voter.
So You’re Saying There’s a Chance: The Holdovers (+200) is incredibly enjoyable, comes from a recognizable name, and is heartwarming, which is an underrated value in this category. Punchy titles, which operate at extremes, tend to do well here, and Anatomy of a Fall is a bit too restrained. It isn’t as twisty or bitter as Parasite, and I tend to thing it’s better to be endeared than it is to be awed by a title when trying to predict this specific category. But it is a favorite for a reason, so who knows?
Animated Feature Film
The Favorite: Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (-150). Good movie, dumb line.
They Can’t All Be Winners, Kid: Elemental (+2800) has the stink of box-office catastrophe behind it, even if it’s unearned. Pixar nods are more just acknowledgments of past glories than an endorsement of current competence. Nimona (+2500) is currently free to watch on YouTube, which tells you that the push came pretty late and too few people have watched it. And as much as I love Robot Dreams (+3500), that movie isn’t even out in theaters for another couple of months and is buried in the Neon Awards box set behind a dozen other films.
So You’re Saying There’s a Chance: I rarely think that lines are inherently disrespectful – a lot of the time, it’s just cold mathematics butting up against sentiment – but to think that Hayao Miyazaki’s return to fantasy filmmaking would be anything other than a massive favorite is dumb. He may not have Miramax agitating for him, but Boy and the Heron (+150) was an event film during a garbage time at the holiday multiplex last year. Opening a Spider-Man film is not a hard task – ask any of the millions who paid to see Marc Webb’s movies back in the ‘10s, even when they were dogshit – and if superhero fatigue is truly setting in anywhere, it would be in the Academy.
Best Supporting Actor
The Favorite: Robert Downey Jr., (Oppenheimer, -3500) who has the kind of momentum reserved for the Kansas City Chiefs come playoff time, no matter how flat the regular season was or how often Mahomes screamed at the refs or how many passes Toney dropped. People are hyped that he escaped Marvel and started doing real shit again, and we can’t blame them.
They Can’t All Be Winners, Kid: Sterling K. Brown (American Fiction, +4000) is an actor we love but is outshined by some of the others in this category simply by star wattage, and Robert De Niro (Killers of the Flower Moon, +2500) has enough hardware already.
So You’re Saying There’s a Chance: Ryan Gosling (Barbie, +1000) is about as obvious a play as telling a dealer to hit you when you’ve got an ace and a ten at the Blackjack table, but Mark Ruffalo (Poor Things, +2500) isn’t a bad choice either – great performance in a great movie, and if the Yorgos tide lifts all of his boats, The Hulk might actually kick Iron Man’s ass for once. But I doubt it.
Best Supporting Actress
The Favorite: Da’Vine Joy Randolph is incredible (The Holdovers, -3500), and her status here is genuinely well-deserved, with Vegas showing her requisite respect.
They Can’t All Be Winners, Kid: Jodie Foster (Nyad, +4000) and Danielle Brooks (The Color Purple, +2000) aren’t terrible options, but there are more interesting plays to be made, and I’d argue these odds are just a bit too low, given that the other nominees are attached to movies that – if they have a good night – could sweep unexpected categories.
So You’re Saying There’s a Chance: Barbieheimer strikes again. At +2000 each, Emily Blunt (Oppenheimer) and America Ferrera (Barbie) are both appealing options. Randolph’s a pretty solid favorite, but, again, ranked-choice voting can do weird things, and it oftentimes favors sweeps. Plus, Ferrara’s got the revenge vote on her side: if you’re going to make a protest vote about Greta Gerwig not getting nominated, honoring the actor who spells out the thesis like she’s brace-faced and on stage Scripps isn’t a bad way to go.
Best Actor
The Favorite: Cillian Murphy (Oppenheimer, -1000) has momentum on his side, plus an entire legion of dairy farmers who are stoked that he celebrated his prior wins with cheese. You can’t keep a good man down after all, it seems.
They Can’t All Be Winners, Kid: Colman Domingo (Rustin, +8000) will likely be back up here whenever Sing Sing comes out, so I wouldn’t mourn his chances too much. I also doubt Bradley Cooper’s chances (+1600) because Maestro doesn’t seem to be setting the world on fire with the Guilds, and star power only gets you so far.
So You’re Saying There’s a Chance: Paul Giamatti (The Holdovers, +500) is the only other nominee with less than +1000 odds, and his chances are decent – it is, after all, one hell of a performance, and it’s the kind of thing that’s squarely pitched at the chests of Academy voters. But if there’s a long-shot play here, it’s Jeffery Wright (American Fiction, +8000), who put in some amazing work in Cord Jefferson’s picture and is the kind of performer who genuinely deserves this type of recognition even if he wasn’t throwing heat. I’m still salty he didn’t get it for French Dispatch a few years back, but whatever.
Best Actress
The Favorite: Lily Gladstone (Killers of the Flower Moon, -225), who, despite having Apple in her corner and metric tons of critical goodwill, isn’t a bigger favorite. Then again, this category is always a fucking mess.
They Can’t All Be Winners, Kid: It is a rare thing that impersonators are almost wholly taken off the board in a category like this, but Annette Bening (Nyad, +5000) and Carey Mulligan (Maestro, +5000) are somehow behind actors who didn’t have a ton of contemporaneous footage of their subjects to mimic. Cue ICP’s “Miracles.”
So You’re Saying There’s a Chance: Emma Stone (Poor Things, +150) has name-brand recognition and, as accomplished as her work in Poor Things is, it is, to say the very least, a genuinely flashy performance. But Sandra Hüller (Anatomy of a Fall, +3500) did fantastic work in two of the year’s best features, and a ranked-choice upset would favor her more than the two battling out on top. Again, Best Actress is an Oscar-Pool ballot destroyer every year, and 2023 doesn’t seem to be an exception.
Best Director
The Favorite: Christopher Nolan (Oppenheimer, -5000), and I’d suggest you stay away from this category.
They Can’t All Be Winners, Kid: Scorsese (Killers of the Flower Moon, +2200) has a statue already, and Jonathan Glazer (Zone of Interest, +3500) and Justine Triet (Anatomy of a Fall, +6500) are the kind of long-shot bets that seem right if you know things about movies but are wrong if you know things about gambling.
So You’re Saying There’s a Chance: The only person with even the slightest chance of toppling Nolan is Yorgos Lanthimos (Poor Things, +2000), and if Oppenheimer takes home Best Picture, this is likely the category where an upset might happen. But this feels like a trap, and probably should be played as such.
Best Picture
The Favorite: Oppenheimer (-5000). Those are some odds, goddamn.
They Can’t All Be Winners, Kid: Past Lives (+10000), Maestro (+15000), American Fiction (+8000). All great films, all buried underneath momentum. I’m also going to put these larger favorites in this category: The Zone of Interest (+2500), which is an artistic triumph but a deliberately alienating film; Killers of the Flower Moon (+4000), which has Apple money behind it but bigger names ahead of it; The Holdovers (+2500), which comes from a prior winner and is more likely to take home smaller statues in lieu of a big one; and Anatomy of a Fall (+4000), because I think the Academy is coming to resent being a satellite Cannes jury. All very good movies! All are unlikely to get ahead of Christopher Nolan.
So You’re Saying There’s a Chance: I don’t think either of these really have a great shot at an upset. Poor Things (+2000) gets the benefit of the doubt, given that it shocked loads of people and took home Golden Globes when nobody expected it to, and it is a Yorgos Lanthimos picture – Hollywood decided it loved him after The Favourite, and his interests seem to line up with your average Oscar voters kinks-list on FetLife, aside from getting topped by Fish People.
If there’s anything that could stop Christopher Nolan, it’s the movie that opened on the same day as his feature, was a rousing box office success, and is likely to improve the Academy’s image among younger voters. That, of course, is Barbie (+3500). Again, not likely – Nolan also busted box office records, made a film that crossed audience boundaries, and, importantly, has an air of “seriousness” around it.
It all depends which Academy we’re getting – the one that hurled hardware at Parasite, or the one that gave an honorary Oscar to the Flash Entering the Speed Force. Both have their appeal for various reasons, but I think it’s still Nolan’s to lose.