Numlock Awards is your one-stop awards season newsletter, and it’s back! Every week, 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. This is the big day!
The Oscar nominees were announced today. Here’s where we stand.
If you’re just joining us, the gist is that precursor awards — the Golden Globes, the Critics’ Choice, the Screen Actors Guild Awards and so on — get assigned a number of points based on how good they are at predicting the Oscars. Contenders accumulate those points when they win those precursors. This lets us get inside the heads of voters, and helps us figure out the state of the Oscar race by aggregating a bunch of these awards. (There’s a lengthier recap of how these points work beneath the nominations if you want to know more.)
Nominees with more points have made a stronger case to precursor voters and thus we can conclude they’ve got a better shot at winning over Oscar voters than those with fewer points.
Check out the archives and sign up to learn more. Don’t hesitate to share with a friend, the fun is just getting started.
Photo credit: Parasite NEON RATED
Best Picture
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (84 points)
1917 (64 points)
The Irishman (62 points)
Parasite (62 points)
Jojo Rabbit (52 points)
Joker (38 points)
Marriage Story (34 points)
Ford v Ferrari (28 points)
Little Women (27 points)
The winner of the BAFTA adds 26 points to its score, the winner of Screen Actors Guild Award (SAG) adds 34, the winner of the Directors Guild Award (DGA) adds 63 and the winner of the Producers Guild Award (PGA) adds 82.
Once Upon a Time In Hollywood, The Irishman, and Parasite are nominated for all four.
1917 and Jojo Rabbit are up at three, Joker at two, and Marriage Story, Ford v Ferrari and Little Women are in contention for one prize.
Photo: 1917
Best Director
Sam Mendes, 1917 (139 points)
Bong Joon-ho, Parasite (92 points)
Quentin Tarantino, Once Upon a Time In Hollywood (67 points)
Martin Scorsese, The Irishman (60 points)
Todd Phillips Joker (21 points)
The winner of BAFTA will add 58 points to their score, the winner of the DGA will add 126 points.
Mendez, Bong, Tarantino and Scorsese are nominated for both.
Phillips is a BAFTA nominee.
Photo credit: Hilary Bronwyn Gayle SMPSP / Bombshell, Lionsgate Publicity,
Best Actress
Renée Zellweger, Judy (115 points)
Scarlett Johansson, Marriage Story (60 points)
Charlize Theron, Bombshell (47 points)
Cynthia Erivo, Harriet (35 points)
Saoirse Ronan, Little Women (25 points)
The winner of BAFTA will add 47 points to their score, the winner of SAG will add 88 points.
Zellweger, Johansson, and Theron are nominated for both.
Ronan is a BAFTA nominee.
Erivo is a SAG nominee.
Best Supporting Actress
Laura Dern, Marriage Story (165 points)
Margot Robbie, Bombshell (61 points)
Scarlett Johansson, Jojo Rabbit (51 points)
Florence Pugh, Little Women (25 points)
Kathy Bates, Richard Jewell (10 points)
The winner of BAFTA will add 63 points to their score, the winner of SAG will add 102 points.
Dern, Robbie, and Johansson are nominated for both.
Pugh is a BAFTA nominee.
Photo credits: ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD, Andrew Cooper, Sony Pictures;
Best Actor
Joaquin Phoenix, Joker (132 points)
Adam Driver, Marriage Story (71 points)
Leonardo DiCaprio, Once Upon a Time In Hollywood (43 points)
Jonathan Pryce, The Two Popes (24 points)
Antonio Banderas, Pain And Glory (17 points)
The winner of BAFTA will add 47 points to their score, the winner of SAG will add 102 points.
Phoenix, Driver and DiCaprio nominated for both.
Pryce is a BAFTA nominee.
Best Supporting Actor
Brad Pitt, Once Upon a Time In Hollywood (179 points)
Tom Hanks, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (67 points)
Al Pacino, The Irishman (57 points)
Joe Pesci, The Irishman (57 points)
Anthony Hopkins, The Two Popes (36 points)
The winner of BAFTA will add 63 points to their score, the winner of SAG will add 82 points.
Pitt, Hanks, Pacino, and Pesci are nominated for both.
Hopkins is a BAFTA nominee.
Just to recap, here’s how the model works and what these points mean.
I pulled the historical predictiveness of different precursor award shows for various Oscar categories over the past 20 years.
Recent performance is weighted three times as much as older predictiveness, because the Academy has undergone a drastic overhaul when it comes to its membership over the past several years.
I convert this into a score by squaring the average and multiplying it by a hundred.
Guild awards are worth twice as much as critic prizes like the Golden Globe and Critics’ Choice, and the five most predictive local critics’ prizes in each category are aggregated to be worth the average of those two national shows.
Rule of thumb, a critic award that gets it right about half the time would be worth around 25 points, one that gets it right four out of five times is worth 64, double that for the guilds.
Getting nominated in a precursor award gets a contender a fifth of the points that precursor is worth, winning it gets you all the marbles.
This weekend: how the Academy’s changes might be changing the Oscar race this year, featuring the return of my favorite chart: