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.
Someone once said that “Man cannot live on Haterade alone,” but I drank it by the gallon last year watching The Brutalist get shut out of the Big Awards, and it sustained me all the way until Oscar season started up again. I called Flow upsetting in Animation and Mikey Madison winning for Anora, but hell, I was just happy to see that the Academy hates an intermission as much as every other audience. But just when I thought I was out…
This time around, though, my ire is mostly reserved for how boring this awards season has been. It is a sure thing that One Battle After Another will win all of these awards, and that’s fine and good. It’s just not very interesting, much like it wasn’t when Everything Everywhere All At Once swept. There’s nothing really to root for. OBAA is relevant, fun, and entertaining – just a little more so than Sinners, which should by all means be a juggernaut. That’s why I’m not even really bothering with Original Score and Song this year – between the inevitability of Sinners’ win in Score and K-Pop Demon Hunters for Song, there’s just no good advice to hand out.
Plus, gambling culture kind of sucks these days. Back in 2017, it was more fun to pluck odds off of some random European betting site as a kind of contrast to what everyone else in the entertainment sphere was doing at the time. If you’re going to call it like a horse race, well, I’ll treat it like a horse race. Now we have a totally unregulated betting market, in which online sportsbooks’ advertising revenue keeps the major sports networks on life support, and prediction markets allow you to place wagers on whether or not the US’s latest illegal attempt at regime change will actually manage to depose a despot (and not give a fuck whether or not you’re in government or not!).
I’m of the opinion that gambling should be safe, legal, and must be done in-person. That way, you gotta count out the bills when you hand them over to the counter clerk, and can still be influenced by all manner of shaming before you drop a grand on Arco winning Best Animated Feature. Every degenerate loves a Dinger Tuesday, and once you hit those Dingers out into the stands, you can’t really put ‘em back in the park, but still, it ain’t a great sign when you’ve got a population desperate enough to bet on everything in hopes of striking it big.
On the other hand, it’s a hell of a lot more honest to talk about the Oscars as if they were a horse race, and I’m pretty sure One Battle After Another beat Sentimental Value at the Preakness one year. Plus, it is fun and absurd, which is, as the man sang, What the World Needs Now. But I’ve got a different song in mind. You know the one.
Hit it, boys:
Welcome, one and all, to Vanyaland‘s annual Oscar Gambling Column, where I take stock of the odds for each topline award category, sort the nominees into three categories, and think about exactly how I’m going to jinx every single movie I actually liked in the process. You know the drill — favorites go in The Favorite, bets that might prove your significant other is right about your gambling addiction are Blunderdogs, and underdogs with a decent enough shot are Dawgs, because they’re the original Gator Haters. Again, this is just for fun, and please do not kidnap me and tie me up to some railroad tracks like you’re an old-timey silent film villain because I let my love for Train Dreams’ cinematography cloud my better judgment.
Per usual, the odds I use come from DraftKings because they’re down the street from VL, and keep their sidewalks nice and power-washed. The numbers are current as of March 10, but make sure that the lines haven’t moved. Vegas doesn’t set these odds in stone, after all. As always, I’m using American odds, because I like the simplicity of a plus and minus system instead of colons, which are ruining movie titles. A “-“ indicates a favorite, where you’d have to bet the number after the minus to win $100, and a “+” represents an underdog, where the number after the plus is what you’d win if you bet $100.
A quick illustration: say you want to bet on One Battle After Another to win Best Picture. At -3500 odds, you’d have to bet $3500 to win $100. Not a good idea. But say you went to an alternate universe where the Academy decided to take fan votes into account, and the overwhelming majority of stans are going to flood the polls with K-Pop Demon Hunters ballots. In that world, One Battle After Another is a +3500 underdog. You plunk down $100, the Letterboxd stans figure out how to get vote-botting to work, and it wins in a massive upset. You now have $3500, and have to deal with the aftermath of living in that world. But this is reality, and K-Pop Demon Hunters will always win. He who dares wins, unless they’re gambling.
Now, I must ask you to rise from your seats, remove your hats, and pay attention, as the Patron Saint of Oscar Gambling, Oscar Gamble, delivers our invocation.
The 98th Academy Awards will take place this Sunday, March 15, at 8 p.m. EDT, and you can catch the broadcast on ABC as always – at least until they take their ball and go to YouTube in a few years so they can beat the “declining ratings equals irrelevance” charges. At that point, those AI-generated Tai Chi ads will be the least of our worries.
Let’s get to it:
Best Animated Feature
The Favorite: K-Pop Demon Hunters (-1800). Just stay away from this category. Voters have children and grandchildren, too, and they’re not going to stop hearing about it if this doesn’t take home some gold.
Blunderdogs: Little Amelie (+1100), Elio (+3500), Arco (+3500), and Zootopia 2 (+900). Just let it go, guys.
Dawgs: No chance. Zootopia 2 could have made a trillion dollars, and it would still lose to K-Pop Demon Hunters.
Best Editing
The Favorite: One Battle After Another (-400). Get ready to read that title a lot.
Blunderdawgs: Marty Supreme (+2500) and Sentimental Value (+10000). Yeah, I don’t see it.
Dawgs: F1 (+250) might win this based on the sheer quality of the work, but these categories typically have a gravitational pull – whatever wins big, wins low. Sinners (+1200), our other juggernaut, may very well take this home too.
Best Cinematography
The Favorite: One Battle After Another (-350). If it loses out on a bunch of these categories, I’m going to run the Oscars recap post with the title “One Upset After Another.”
Blunderdawgs: Frankenstein (+2000) is here because folks mistake “cinematography” as a catch-all for all the other technical categories (boy, that is one ugly movie), and Marty Supreme (+8000) just doesn’t have the sauce compared to its competitors.
Dawgs: Sinners (+275) will likely be in the running no matter what, but Train Dreams (+800) feels like a really good longshot bet should one decide to take the plunge. It’s beautiful.
Best International Feature
The Favorite: Sentimental Value (-250), which feels a bit too low.
Blunderdawgs: Sirat (+5000) came out too late to capitalize on the festival buzz, The Voice of Hind Rajab (+2800) doesn’t have the name-brand recognition of the other titles, and It Was Just an Accident (+1400) should win in a just world, but I just hate that line.
Dawgs: The Secret Agent (+175), which has a leg up on the rest of the competition by virtue of having… a psychotic severed leg. Don’t kick yourself the day after for missing out on this one.
Best Original Screenplay
The Favorite: Sinners (-1800). This feels like a fair line.
Blunderdawgs: I’ll be rooting for It Was Just An Accident (+1600), but it and Blue Moon (+4000) feel like long shots.
Dawgs: I have to give a nod to Marty Supreme (+800)just because it is technically the best dawg here, but I think there’s a ton of, well, value in Sentimental Value (+2000). That is a well-written motion picture, and if it’s going to get any non-Skarsgard hardware, I’d think it’d be in this category.
Best Adapted Screenplay
The Favorite: Ok, bear with me for a second: it’s a travesty that One Battle After Another (-3500) is in this category. If that’s the case, Marty Supreme and Blue Moon should be here as well – they’re “inspired by” stories that presumably had source texts to draw from, and PTA really stripped Vineland for parts. This sort of gets to the heart of why I hate the categorical divisions here: are we praising adaptations for their fidelity, their innovation, or their quality?
Blunderdawgs: Train Dreams (+1600) has a great script but isn’t eye-popping, Frankenstein (+2800) really got the nod because it filled out the category, and I’m sure most folks who saw Bugonia (+2800) didn’t realize it was based on another movie.
Dawgs: Hamnet (+1000) has some amount of recency bias – folks are likely to have read this one, given it only came out a few years ago – and it also has the original author as a credited screenwriter. OBAA likely will get it so PTA can get some more hardware, but the debate rages on, and Hamnet might benefit from that.
Best Supporting Actress
The Favorite: Amy Madigan (Weapons, +100) should put a hex on whoever decided she was a dawg.
Blunderdawgs: The ladies of Sentimental Value’s supporting cast, Elle Fanning (+10000) and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas (+2800), deserve these noms, and should be VIPs at whatever afterparties they go to.
Dawgs: Again, it’s more about gravity here. If OBAA has a good night, Teyana Taylor (+185) very likely might win (and she really deserves it, given how much the movie flags when she leaves the narrative; if Sinners does, Wunmi Mosaku (+240) will likely take it instead. But Madigan feels like a good choice at these odds. She’s great in that movie, and delivered what might be the most memorable performance of the year. It’s not like she didn’t absolutely sweep most other ceremonies, either. Just a weird, weird category.
Best Supporting Actor
The Favorite: Sean Penn (One Battle After Another, -350). This should be lower, given that he sucks and this isn’t the NFL Hall of Fame.
Blunderdawgs: Jacob Elordi (Frankenstein, +2000) owns a Steam Deck. I’d rather wager on whether or not he’ll be playing it during the ceremony than bet on him to win this award.
Dawgs: I’d wager this is the category where a true upset happens. If Penn’s the favorite – who does have a history of stealing thunder from better performances when he’s nominated (that Milk Oscar curdled as soon as it was handed to him) – there’s no reason why Stellan Skarsgard (Sentimental Value, +400) shouldn’t win, as he has all the momentum and got most of the hardware. If his movie has a great night, Delroy Lindo (Sinners, +600) might pull it out here. But if anyone from One Battle After Another should get this award, it’s Benicio Del Toro (+2000). That’s great value, too.
Best Actress
The Favorite: Jessie Buckley (Hamnet, -3500). That feels a bit much.
Blunderdawgs: Kate Hudson (Song Sung Blue, +2500), Emma Stone (Bugonia, +2500), Renate Reinsve (Sentimental Value, +2500). Notice a pattern there? That’s a polite way of giving someone +10000 odds while still trying to drive some action. Not impossible that these wonderful performances will win, but I doubt it.
Dawgs: Rose Byrne (If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, +1200) should win, and might. If anything, this category feels like a bellwether for the Academy’s current crossroads: on the one hand, the favorite is starring in a period drama, full of heightened emotion; and on the other, the closest dawg is starring in an A24 nightmare, full of high anxiety. Both deserve it, but it really depends on exactly how young these new members are.
Best Actor
The Favorite: Michael B. Jordan (Sinners, -200). So nice, he should have been nominated twice.
Blunderdawgs: Leonardo DiCaprio (One Battle After Another, +1200) has to be feeling pretty fucking old given that he won his Best Actor Oscar a decade ago, and Ethan Hawke (Blue Moon, +3000) deserves this award, but the ratings won’t be great if he does, so, nah.
Dawgs: Wagner Moura (The Secret Agent, +1800) should be pissed that his odds are this high, given that he won at Cannes and at the Golden Globes. We’ll see if Timothee Chalamet (Marty Supreme, +185) talked himself out of some hardware, but I have a feeling it’ll come down to the dumbest of all reasons for a voting body to decide against an actor: their character’s “likeability.” If Oscar voters see their ballots as endorsements, Jordan deserves his favorite status, and Moura has a real shot.
Best Director
The Favorite: Paul Thomas Anderson (One Battle After Another, -2500). Them’s some odds, folks. Amazing what Magnolia wrought.
Blunderdawgs: Chloe Zhao (Hamnet, +1600) has won before, Josh Safdie (Marty Supreme, +3500) probably should win but won’t, and Joachim Trier (Sentimental Value, +4000) is awesome, but he doesn’t have a pithy three-letter acronym to go by, so he’s shit out of luck.
Dawgs: As you might have guessed, the only person capable of stopping PTA is Ryan Coogler (Sinners, +800). If things start to go Sinners’ way early on, there’s a decent chance this line might move mid-ceremony. The odds are long, but this feels like a plausible upset depending on momentum. Either way, it’s your funeral.
Best Picture
The Favorite: One Battle After Another (-400). Yeah. Boy, I’m sick of typing that.
Blunderdawgs: A longer list than usual, this year: Train Dreams (+10000), Frankenstein (+10000), Bugonia (+10000), F1 (+20000), Sentimental Value (+6500), Marty Supreme (+4000), Hamnet (+2000), The Secret Agent (+20000). I don’t care how high the odds are for Hamnet, it’s not getting the hardware.
Dawgs: There’s really only one option for a dawg, here: Sinners (+280). If it weren’t for the fact that every other awards body gave OBAA top honors, I’d say it’d be a pick ‘em. Both are populist, artful, entertaining thrillers, and if I were going to give any edge to Sinners, it’d be that it made a shitload of money compared to PTA’s feature. But betting against OBAA feels like a fool’s errand, so it’s hard to recommend anyhow.