How to Bet on Oscar Season

Far be it from me to tell major institutions in the entertainment industry how to do their jobs, but the Toronto International Film Festival and the Primetime Emmy Awards need to figure out a way to not converge every September, driving us into a frenzy of small-screen glitz and big-screen potential as we attempt to cover them both simultaneously. That being said, my stewardship over Gold Rush at Vulture has been a ton of fun, and now that the 2024 Emmys are over (Hacks! Who knew?!), I can confidently pass the newsletter aegis to our Oscar Futures columnist, Nate Jones. And while he monitors the Academy Awards race with his trademark insight and irresistible weekly rankings, I’m going to be turning my attention to the Movies Fantasy League, which is currently open for submissions until October 3. (If you haven’t signed up yet, you can learn more here.)

If you haven’t done the MFL before (we’re on year three!), it’s essentially fantasy football but for movies. You select a roster of eight films that have either already opened or will open in 2024. Once scoring begins on October 3, your roster will accumulate points for achieving various box-office, award, and critical-approval milestones. (I’ll be tracking points accumulation in my weekly newsletter, which you can sign up to receive here.) But the most important facet of the game at this stage is that your eight-film roster must hew to an imaginary budget of $100; each film has been assigned a dollar value. Nate’s also in his third year of playing the game, and we figure, What better way to take the off-ramp from Emmysburgh and head toward Oscarville than by interrogating Nate’s very own MFL roster and breaking down his strategy for betting on Academy season?

Joe Reid: Nate, you went to the Venice Film Festival while I went to TIFF, so we’re both primed to overthink the value of this year’s awards prospects. How’s that MFL roster coming?

Nate Jones: Hi, Joe! I’m always glad to have an excuse to talk about my movies fantasy team, though I must begin with a caveat. Despite covering the awards race for a living, and possessing the theoretical advantage of seeing many of the films in question before the general public can, I’ve never done very well in MFL. Two years ago, I was bearish on Everything Everywhere All at Once, so decided to zag by drafting rivals like Tár and Banshees of Inisherin. You can imagine how that worked out for me. Last year, I went all in on Barbenheimer, which was half the right call: Oppenheimer cleaned up as expected, but Barbie failed to live up to its end of the bargain, winning only Best Original Song.

The one thing everyone can agree on about this Oscar season is that it’s the most unpredictable race in years with few obvious front-runners in any of the big races. Accordingly, my strategy this year is to have a relatively balanced squad. I tend not to put much stock in the box-office element of the game, in part because I can’t be bothered to do the math to figure out how many millions of dollars are equivalent to one Indie Spirit nomination. Instead, I’m focusing on a handful of well-regarded award contenders mixed in with a couple of low-budget options that caught my eye during festival season. Here’s my current draft (though it’s subject to change, since we’re still one week before the deadline):

- Anora ($25)

- Emilia Pérez ($25)

- The Brutalist ($15)

- The Wild Robot ($15)

- Sonic the Hedgehog 3 ($10)

- The Seed of the Sacred Fig ($5)

- Flow ($3)

- The Life of Chuck ($2)

Joe: Okay, I’m seeing a kind of spend-but-don’t-splurge strategy here. Your priciest items are Anora ($25) and Emilia Pérez ($25), two splashes from this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Cannes has been an increasingly successful perch for Oscar hopefuls (Parasite, Anatomy of a Fall, and The Zone of Interest have all done quite well after Cannes premieres). You’re clearly following the fall-festival buzz for The Brutalist ($15) and The Life of Chuck ($2). This feels strategic. So let’s dig into that.

Find Your Spine

Nate: Ever since you released the prices, I’ve built my drafts around the spine of Anora, Emilia Pérez, and The Brutalist. By most estimates, these are three of the season’s strongest contenders, and I can see a world where they all score Best Picture and Best Director noms. I also like that — outside Anora’s Mikey Madison and Emilia Pérez’s Karla Sofía Gascón squaring off in Best Actress — they shouldn’t cannibalize each other too much in the other categories. Ultimately, I want to ride with my guys, and Anora and The Brutalist were two of my favorites from festival season. (No shade on Emilia Pérez; I just haven’t seen it yet.)

This strategy means at the moment I’m going without films like Conclave and Blitz (both $20), but Conclave is strongest in Best Actor, where I already have The Brutalist’s Adrien Brody, and Blitz won’t screen until after the deadline, which makes me nervous. And anyway, you can’t have everyone: I’m also avoiding Gladiator II ($40) and Dune: Part Two ($35), your two most expensive films.

Joe: I’m glad you mentioned this year’s big-ticket items, Gladiator II (a movie I’m still amazed never added a subtitle; if I could’ve placed a wager on Gladiator: Echoes in Eternity becoming that movie’s title, I would have) and Dune: Part Two. For the first time since the MFL began, we don’t have an Oscar front-runner heading into the fall season. With a few notable exceptions, I think the odds are decently strong that the Best Picture winner hasn’t opened yet and thus will be the first time that a Best Picture winner will also be collecting box-office points. That would be the one thing that would make me willing to pony up the big Gladiator II price tag: Even if betting on its Oscar prospects is risky, the reward could be enormous.

Some other movies that might straddle the line between box-office and award success that you didn’t mention, Wicked ($20) and Mufasa: The Lion King ($20), could become pretty huge hits while also contending in Oscar craft and music categories, if not the major ones.

Nate: You’re right that I’m taking a risk without Dune or Gladiator. If they hit, they hit big — the original Gladiator won five Oscars, and Dune: Part One took six. I’m comfortable betting against them, though, for a few reasons.

The first is that I don’t see either as a real threat for Best Picture. Dune has the Two Towers issue of being the middle installment in a trilogy, and Gladiator, underneath its CGI pomp, is still a Ridley Scott film — and Sir Ridley hasn’t produced a major Oscar player in nearly a decade. The second is that they’re competing in the same awards-season lane. Every craft trophy Dune wins is one Gladiator doesn’t and vice versa. And the third reason is that they’re both really expensive! In a year like this one, I want as many shots at the top prize as possible. Upgrading to one of these effects-heavy blockbusters means I’d have to downgrade too much elsewhere.

Nail Your Bargain Picks

Joe: This strategy makes sense coming off last year when, yes, big-dog Oppenheimer did win the day, but the two most important movies to have on your roster were Poor Things and American Fiction, in part because they were so cheap ($10 and $5, respectively). Drafters of those movies benefited from us locking in the prices before the Venice (for Poor Things) and TIFF (for American Fiction) buzz had landed. So you could say the key to winning the league is to win with those mid-to-low-budget movies on your roster.

Nate: Exactly. And with almost two-thirds of my budget devoted to just three films, I’m in need of some cheap options. When you priced The Life of Chuck at $2, you probably had no idea that the semi-obscure Stephen King adaptation would win the People’s Choice Award at TIFF. But now it has, making the Mike Flanagan film one of this season’s biggest wild cards. I haven’t seen Chuck yet, so I can’t accurately assess its chances of continuing the decadelong tradition of People’s Choice winners getting into Best Picture. But for less than the price of a cup of coffee, I might as well take a flier — though I’ll hold off on pulling the trigger until just before the deadline, in case Chuck, which just got bought by Neon, gets officially dated for 2025. (Editor’s Note: That exact thing just happened, so it’s back to the drawing board for Nate. Readers, do not draft Life of Chuck!)

Joe: I was in the theater for the Life of Chuck world premiere, noted the enthusiasm in the room, and still was shocked by that TIFF People’s Choice Award. I like the movie fine, but it’s got plenty of shortcomings and I ultimately just don’t see it as an awards movie. Could I be wrong? Absolutely!

Nate: Welp, let’s hope for a theatrical release and a robust box office, then! Which leads me to my next pick. Since you juiced the box-office rewards this year, I’d like to have at least one commercial player on my roster. You mentioned Wicked and The Lion King above, but $20 feels a little steep when you can get genuine award contenders in that same price bracket. $10 feels like the level I’m willing to spend, and your draft guide pointed me toward Sonic the Hedgehog 3 ($10), the latest in what you note is a surprisingly potent franchise. The second film grossed $190 million domestic, and this one’s got a plumb December 20 release date — here’s hoping for a blue Christmas.

Joe: I’m glad you mentioned Sonic as a creature of pure box office. Last year, I undervalued Five Nights at Freddy’s, and that became a giant hit for a low price tag. This year, along with that zippy little hedgehog, there are potential box-office grabs for Spider-villains Venom ($10) and Kraven ($5), as well as The Rock and Chris Evans rescuing jacked Santa J.K. Simmons in Red One ($5), a movie that I could very much see making huge Thanksgiving bank while we all bemoan the state of blockbuster filmmaking.

Consider the International Options

Nate: You joke, but there is a nonzero chance I’ll end up with Red One on my final ballot. The people still love Chris Evans and The Rock. (Or am I stuck in 2019?) However, right now, the $5 spot in my lineup is going to the Iranian legal drama The Seed of the Sacred Fig ($5), whose director, Mohammad Rasoulof, fled the country ahead of receiving an eight-year prison sentence. Sacred Fig won a special prize at Cannes and is now the official Oscar submission from Germany, where Rasoulof is living in exile. There’s a powerful narrative here, and I’ve heard from one pundit who believes Fig could sneak into the Best Picture ten. Since the game launched, Emilia Pérez has become France’s submission, which lowers Fig’s ceiling a bit, since the musical is now expected to take up most of the oxygen in the International Film race. I’ll have to crunch the numbers and see if Rasoulof’s film is still a pick even if it “only” performs to the level of something like last year’s Perfect Days. Otherwise, pack up the sleigh.

Assuming I do keep Fig, I have $18 to spend on my final two films. My initial instinct was to pick up The Piano Lesson ($10) or Babygirl ($10), plus Hard Truths ($8), all of which are in the mix for some acting love. However, to use a phrase I learned from HBO’s Industry, they’d also be hedges that capped my team’s upside. The Piano Lesson’s best chance at gold is in Supporting Actress, where Danielle Deadwyler is up against Emilia Pérez’s Zoe Saldana; likewise with Babygirl and Hard Truths competing with Anora and Emilia Pérez for spots in a stacked Best Actress field.

Joe: While I don’t approve of Industry jargon, I like that you’re essentially picking a favorite in a handful of award categories and putting all your chips in. Best Actress is stacked and Best Actor is looking pretty competitive too. But both supporting categories look wide open, which is why I might look at Kieran Culkin in A Real Pain ($10) or Brian Tyree Henry, whose performance in The Fire Inside ($5) was getting raves in a lot of the TIFF conversations I was having. I’d even keep an eye on the just-opened A Different Man ($5) and a possible campaign for Adam Pearson’s performance.

Nate: All good options — I really hope Pearson gets a campaign — but I decided instead to look beyond the four acting races. One thing I noticed about teams that did better than me the past two seasons was that they typically featured the eventual Animated Feature winner. Thus I think it’ll be worth paying a slight premium for The Wild Robot ($15), which after earning raves out of TIFF feels like the early front-runner.

Don’t Forget About Docs and Animation

Joe: I’m glad you’ve zeroed in on one of my favorite MFL strategies: the specialty categories. I price them low because there aren’t as many opportunities for animated films, documentaries, or international features to rack up points, but if you find the right bargain, they pay off. (Remember how Robot Dreams was one of the most profitable movies in last year’s MFL? Good times.) Besides the ones you pointed out, I’d also mention Will & Harper ($5), a documentary hit at Sundance in which Will Ferrell embarks on a road trip with his longtime SNL friend the newly transitioned Harper Steele; the Netflix doc Daughters ($2), which won the Audience Award at Sundance and is about a Daddy Daughter Dance at prison; and No Other Land ($3), which is currently without distribution but has been widely praised for its depiction of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank.

Other animated films I’d keep an eye on include Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl ($5) and my quiet little obsession, the anime Lord of the Rings: War of the Rohirrim ($5), which is exactly what it sounds like. On the International Feature front, there’s the Walter Salles movie I’m Still Here ($3), which will be Brazil’s entry into the Oscar race. There’s also the best film that I saw in Toronto, Rungano Nyoni’s On Becoming a Guinea Fowl ($3).

Nate: Even though I picked eventual winner 20 Days in Mariupol last season, I’m nevertheless worried about documentaries. That branch of the Academy has a penchant for shivving the ostensible front-runner just to prove it can. Especially if the documentary features a celebrity, and double especially if it’s described as “heartwarming,” which is enough to make me stay away from Will & Harper. Instead, I’ll fish in the comparatively more tranquil waters of animation and go for Flow ($3), which I’m hoping can be this year’s Robot Dreams. It’s an entirely wordless, entirely charming film about cute animals trying to survive a flood, and it also happens to be Latvia’s Oscar entry, giving it a slim chance of being doubly nominated.

So that’s my team! I’m feeling good about it now, though I’m sure I’ll be cursing several of these choices come December. But how about you; what’s keeping you up at night?

Joe: Festival buzz definitely led me to make a lot of last-minute changes to the MFL prices. Joker: Folie a Deux ($20) certainly was tracking a lot more expensive before the pans from Venice rained down. I also bumped down the price tags for Queer ($15) and Nightbitch ($10) after the nonplussed reactions (mine included) from Venice and Toronto. I priced Sing Sing at $25 because it seemed like A24 was going to make a hard run at award season with that movie. But it went and acquired The Brutalist, which is currently looking like its new favorite toy.

I’m also curious to see how The Nickel Boys ($20) emerges from this weekend’s New York Film Festival opening-night perch and whether it can situate itself as a Best Picture contender. And do you think the films lurking late in December like A Complete Unknown ($15) and Robert Eggers’s Nosferatu ($8) will make an impact?

Nate: I remember telling you this summer that Nosferatu should be more expensive, though now I’m reconsidering as The Brutalist should scratch a similar itch for vintage-loving award voters. But I simply cannot bring myself to pick up something no one has seen yet. If I’m paying cold, hard imaginary cash for a movie, I want it to be at least somewhat known.