Numlock Awards: The race is heading in a pretty clear direction
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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.
Somewhat quick update this week in light of the Directors Guild of America Awards on Saturday. Nothing too surprising if you followed that event with the winner being One Battle After Another in general and Paul Thomas Anderson in particular.
The DGA famously is great at predicting Best Director. There BAFTAs still remain, but those are simply less predictive; no matter what, Paul Thomas Anderson will be the frontrunner on Oscar night, and the only thing left to decide in London is whether he’ll be a complete lock for the W or if there will be a discernible underdog in the category.
In Picture, this certainly advances OBAA’s case, but it ain’t over yet.
The Golden Globes were a bit underwhelming because it split up our top contenders across drama (Sinners and Hamnet) and comedy (One Battle After Another and Marty Supreme), which raises questions about their actual head-to-head prospects. But at both Critics Choice and now the DGA, One Battle After Another has beaten all of its competition. Of the subset of regional critics prizes we bother looking at for this category, it’s also swept up there.
The race isn’t over, but we’re pretty clearly in the middlegame, and it won’t take much to push us to endgame. BAFTA on February 22 will be decisive; a win for One Battle After Another there wouldn’t entirely secure OBAA as the frontrunner on Oscar night, but it would take enough points off the board such that even a massive late surge from a rival like Hamnet or Sinners would not be enough to be a frontrunner. A win for a rival at BAFTA, on the other hand, may tip the race by at least signaling which of OBAA’s competitors is likely to consolidate support in the ranked-choice voting on Oscar night.
Realistically, the PGA Awards on February 28 will be when we know how this race is going to break down. But for now, One Battle After Another has a good lead.