Our new Oscar model makes Anora the Best Picture favorite, but not a sure thing

To mark tonight’s Oscars, the latest edition of The Numbers Business Report featured a new model designed to estimate the odds of each of the nominees for Best Picture winning the award based on their performance in other awards shows this year. The results this season point towards Anora as the winner tonight, but its victory is far from a sure thing.

Our model is built by looking at how the ultimate winners of Best Picture have performed in previous awards events through the season. After compiling our data, as shown in the table below, we tracked each Oscar-winning Best Picture and the number of additional awards it won in the same year. We then calculated how frequently an Oscar winner secured each of these awards.

Out of the 24 Best Picture winners in our dataset, 17 also won the Producers Guild of America (PGA) award for Best Theatrical Motion Picture. To quantify this influence, we summed all the awards we analyzed—79 in total—and assigned a proportional weight to each category. In this case, dividing 17 by 79 gave us the weight for the PGA award. These weights were then normalized to a percentage influence. Ultimately, if a film won all of these major awards, it would receive a perfect score of 100 points (and be considered a virtual certainty for Oscar glory).

Applying this model for 2025 gives us a prediction for tonight’s result:

Anora is a fairly clear favorite, but actually scores under 50% overall. Basically, going into tonight it’s a coin-flip between Anora and “Something Else”.

The most likely “Something Else”? That would be Conclave, with about a 30% chance, per the model. The Brutalist, Nickel Boys and Emilia Perez make up the field. A winner outside those top five would be a real shock.

Enjoy the show!

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Bruce Nash, bruce.nash@the-numbers.com