How do films with four or more acting nominations fare at the Oscars?
In addition to being this year’s Oscar nominations leader with a dozen bids across 11 categories, “The Power of the Dog” is the 38th film in the academy’s 94-year history to amass at least four acting nominations. Star Benedict Cumberbatch is up for the Best Actor award, while his castmates Kirsten Dunst, Jesse Plemons, and Kodi Smit-McPhee have all been recognized as supporting players. In a matter of weeks, their film will either be the 26th to score at least one win from four or more acting bids or the 13th to lose them all.
On average, a film of this kind earns a total of 10 nominations. 33 of them have received Best Picture bids and 13 have won the top honor. “The Power of the Dog” is nominated there as well as in the next seven non-acting categories where its predecessors have most often landed: Best Director (33; 12 wins), Best Film Editing (26; five wins), Best Cinematography (24; 10 wins), Best Adapted Screenplay (23; 11 wins), Best Production Design (19; nine wins), Best Score (15; four wins), and Best Sound (14; three wins). 12 have picked up bids for Best Costume Design (three wins), 11 for Best Original Screenplay (six wins), and two each for Best Song and Best Visual Effects. To date, the only film in the group that did not make it into any non-acting categories is “Othello” (1966).
Further analysis of the 37 previous cases indicates that Best Supporting Actress is the luckiest acting category in such a situation: 15 of these films won that award, from “Gone with the Wind” (Hattie McDaniel) in 1940 to “Chicago” (Catherine Zeta-Jones) in 2003. Next is Best Actress with 11 wins from 1940 (Vivien Leigh, “Gone with the Wind”) to 2013 (Jennifer Lawrence, “Silver Linings Playbook”). Male victories are significantly less likely, with seven in Best Supporting Actor from 1951 (George Sanders, “All About Eve”) to 1984 (Jack Nicholson, “Terms of Endearment”) and just six in Best Actor from 1955 (Marlon Brando, “On the Waterfront”) to 1980 (Dustin Hoffman, “Kramer vs. Kramer”).
Plemons and Smit-McPhee are the 21st featured male costars to be nominated against each other and the 11th to be part of one of these acting quartets or quintets. Seven of the previous 20 instances have resulted in a win for one of the men involved, with Nicholson (over John Lithgow) being the latest example from the smaller group of 10 past films and Daniel Kaluuya (over LaKeith Stanfield – “Judas and the Black Messiah,” 2021) being the last overall.
The first of the dozen films with at least four unsuccessful acting bids, “My Man Godfrey,” was also the first to receive as many and the first to cover each of the four categories. The only two films that have lost all four races in the time since are “Sunset Boulevard” (1951) and “American Hustle” (2014). “I Remember Mama” (1949), “The Defiant Ones” (1959), “The Hustler” (1962), “Othello,” “Rocky” (1977), “The Turning Point” (1978), and “Doubt” (2009) each had four bids across three categories and lost them all. “Peyton Place” (1958) and “Tom Jones” (1964) are the only two films with five acting losses apiece.
On average, these 37 films have ended up with just one acting win each and have typically triumphed in two additional categories. “Gone with the Wind,” “From Here to Eternity” (1954), and “On the Waterfront” each won six other contests, while “My Man Godfrey,” “I Remember Mama,” “Peyton Place,” “Othello,” “The Turning Point,” “Doubt,” and “American Hustle” finished with no victories at all.
We currently predict that “The Power of the Dog” will take the Best Picture, Best Director (Jane Campion), and Best Adapted Screenplay prizes. Plemons is running fourth in his race while Cumberbatch, Dunst, and Smit-McPhee are all second behind respective frontrunners Will Smith (“King Richard”), Ariana DeBose (“West Side Story”), and Troy Kotsur (“CODA”).
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