It’s February, and that means one thing: it’s time to hand out some gold statues. The Academy Awards are one of the biggest media events of the year and this year’s Best Picture race is one of the closest in recent memory, with two very different movies neck-and-neck in the Academy Awards’ most prestigious category.
Read on for analysis of the field for the award for Best Picture at this year’s Oscars, and keep our complete list of the 2015 Academy Awards odds up and at the ready while you do.
[sc:PopCultureArticles ]
2015 Academy Awards Best Picture Betting Odds, Predictions, Analysis, and Picks
The Odds
This year’s field features just eight films, down from nine in the past couple years. Here’s a look at the big eight, as priced according to our Academy Awards odds section.
Best Picture Nomination
Odds
Birdman
-240
Boyhood
+120
American Sniper
+1,200
The Grand Budapest Hotel
+2,500
The Imitation Game
+3,500
Whiplash
+6,000
Selma
+6,000
Theory of Everything
+6,000
The Favorites
There might as well only be two nominees for this year’s award, Birdman and Boyhood. And the two films couldn’t be much more different. On the one hand, there’s Birdman, Alejandro Iñárritu’s opus on the state of Hollywood mythmaking, and the importance/ fleeting possibility of surviving as a healthy artist.
On the other, a one-of-a-kind piece of filmmaking that will, regardless of the outcome of the Oscars, be remembered by audiences for decades to come: Boyhood. Boyhood is a film that follows, in what is essentially real time, the entire life of an American boy.
The odds have swung back and forth since they opened as close to a dead heat between the two, but Birdman‘s success at other awards shows, including the Producers Guild of America, the Screen Actors Guild, and the Directors Guild of America, have pushed it ahead leading up to the award. Since 1995, only one film (all-time great Apollo 13) has ever swept the highest awards from all three guilds, as Birdman did, and then been snubbed.
All that said, Boyhood is an entirely unique film. Director Richard Linklater and co-producer Catherine Sutherland put in their time with this film, shooting it over 14 years, and the sheer effort might hit home with the voters of the Academy. Not unlike The Artist, which won Best Picture back in 2011, Boyhood looks and feels unlike any other movie in contention, and that may be enough to push it over the top in the mind’s of voters. Plus, at +120, you’re getting much more value on Linklater’s work than Iñárritu’s.
Got an angle on one of these two films to win Best Picture this year? Take 30 seconds to create a betting account now and cash in on the biggest day of the North American cinematic calendar.
Longshots and Sleepers
If there is anything that could potentially hurt the chances for Birdman, it might be the way Imitation Game and American Sniper have dominated at the box office heading into voting. Bradley Cooper as an American hero certainly sings in the hearts and minds of the Academy, and the enormous box office sales (the movie beat out The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 as the highest-grossing film of 2014) could only help for those voters that want to speak for the voice of the common American.
There is also something to be said for Wes Anderson’s latest effort, The Grand Budapest Hotel at +2,500. Anderson’s reputation as a genius, indie filmmaker with his own hyper-distinct style is the kind of thing the Academy has awarded in the past.
Grand Budapest is a particular accessible film by Anderson’s standards, despite having three frames around the story, an extremely fast-moving plot, and roughly 7,000 characters – that’s pretty simple for Anderson’s standards. The relatively mainstream-friendly tone of the movie could lead to the Academy annointing this Wes Anderson film as the one that gets recognition for the many indie he’s produced over the years, from Rushmore to The Royal Tanenbaums to Fantastic Mr. Fox.
Beyond these top four, it’s hard to imagine any of the other contenders shocking the world on Sunday with a win no one saw coming. That’s simply not how the Oscars–which are dominated by headlines, hype, and what voters perceive they “should” do–work. Sorry, Selma.
Writer’s Prediction
Boyhood gets beaten in almost every other category, then wins Best Picture.
