Numlock Awards: Well now we've really got a race

The SAG Awards flipped a few categories on their heads, and people underestimate their winners at their peril.

Numlock Awards is your one-stop awards season newsletter. Join Walt Hickey and Michael Domanico as they break down the math behind the Oscars and the best narratives going into film’s biggest night. Today’s edition comes from Walter.

This past weekend saw the Producers Guild Awards and the Actor Awards, presented by the actors union SAG, which have given us the last major bit of insight we can expect to have for this race. There’s still a little data bound to trickle in for the straggler local awards we track, but the WGA’s cancellation of their own awards show over a labor dispute means that there’s really not much coming down the line that will shift our views. Let’s dive in to what we learned over the weekend, and what it means for the race.

Best Picture

All One Battle After Another had to do to head into Oscar night a favorite was to win at least one of the PGA or SAG awards, and the movie won the better of the pair anyway, snagging a win at the Producers Guild but dropping the Actor Awards for best ensemble to Sinners. The PGA is a very, very predictive award, while the SAG prize is a nice-to-have. Here’s how our model weights those wins:

I had a lovely conversation with Vulture’s Nate Jones last week talking about the weekend, and the key point I had from this race is that the PGA’s high forecasting ability is likely attributable to some combination of

• (a) it’s also a ranked-choice ballot,

• (b) other award shows tend to reward movies that serve their constituencies (BAFTA favors Brits, SAG favors Americans) while the PGA just really seems to want to predict the Oscars, and

• (c) the PGA’s voter base of “salaried suits” is a pretty big chunk of the Academy, with the Academy branch statistics revealing 680 producers, 759 executives, 657 public relations and 244 artist representatives, the PGA does a decent job of approximating the tastes of like 23 percent of Academy voters.

So, there you have it: One Battle After Another will enter the night as a solid but not certain favorite.

Best Supporting Actor

Has anyone won an Oscar just for walking? And frankly, deserved it so justly? Sean Penn (One Battle After Another) will find out, as the two-time Best Actor winner has become the favorite to win a third Oscar according to our model. All the more impressive is that he’s been able to bank wins with a costar in the category, which many thought would lead to people cancelling out votes. Early wins at critics’ groups from Jacob Elordi (Frankenstein) and Stellan Skarsgard (Sentimental Value) have been steamrolled by Col. Lockjaw’s wins at BAFTA and SAG.

Best Supporting Actress

A win for Amy Madigan (Weapons) puts her yet again on top, for the first time since the beginning of the race when her win at Critics Choice made her an early favorite. This win has a lot of juice, as the SAG Award is generally very predictive in this category (85 percent over the past 20 years) and getting better (90 percent over the past 10, and five-for-five lately). If there’s an upset I won’t be incredibly shocked, but Madigan has earned her place as frontrunner.

Best Actress

At this point, just engrave the statue. I simply am unable to make a case for anyone else as frontrunner here.

Best Actor

While the prevailing sentiment would seem to give Timothée Chalamet (Marty Supreme) the edge in this category, our model’s giving Michael B. Jordan (Sinners) the lead here.

Frankly, Jordan’s case is stronger here: SAG is good at picking Best Actor winners, and Chalamet has had several opportunities to clear the field and he has not.

SAG is good at picking winners; over the past 20 years, it’s tipped 85 percent of Best Actor winners.

This is what you see when there’s more uncertainty in the category than one would otherwise expect. Timothée’s résumé — a Golden Globe for Comedy and a Critics Choice Award — feels slim in light of what he hasn’t won, with Chalamet losing a BAFTA, losing a SAG Award, and not pulling off anything particularly decisive among the local prizes. Losing at BAFTA to an actor not up for an Oscar would have been an understandable setback had he won at SAG; now it’s coming off a blaring early warning signal.

Jordan, on the other hand, could not have picked a better time to start peaking. I don’t think Sinners has any abnormal case for upset potential; it could happen, but I don’t think there’s something the model’s not measuring. I do think that voters clearly like the film; it got that record for most nominations, so the crafts like it, and it managed to mount an great campaign even though it premiered all the way back in April. I do think that people looking for a chance to award this film have now found a top category in which to do it, in the form of the respected actor who played a particularly challenging double role.

So is there a case for Chalamet? Here’s the best I got for you: the two awards he’s whiffed on are potentially due for some mean reversion. And true, that 85 percent accuracy number you could argue is deceptive; its ten-year accuracy is just 70 percent, and SAG only nailed three out of the past five winners.

Still, we’re going to break with the consensus here (based on prediction markets and what not) and say Jordan’s in the lead.

We’ve already got a few questions in for a pre-Oscars mailbag, so we’re gonna do one! Shoot in some of your questions (awards@numlock.news) or leave them in the comments below and we’ll take a stab at some.

Thanks to these folks for shouting out the newsletter, check em out!:

• Entertainment Strategy Guy

• This Is the Weekend That Will Decide the Oscars, Vulture