Despite “Conclave’s” recent wins at BAFTA and SAG, “Anora” is still widely expected to take Best Picture at the Oscars on March 2nd. However, one of the most difficult obstacles in predicting that “Anora” will win Best Picture is figuring out what else it could win, if anything.
By this point, even surprise Best Picture winners like “Moonlight,” “Parasite,” and “CODA,” as well as winners with a slim win package like “Spotlight,” and “Argo,” had either locked up a win or two or already knew exactly what their path to clinching the race was – but “Anora” has five potential categories that are somehow still a 50-50 tossup.
As such, there are multiple Best Picture win paths “Anora” can take that would be fairly conventional, some that are rarely used in this era, and some that would be unprecedented in modern Oscar history. If “Anora” is finally going to pull this out, these are the most likely and most unlikely win combinations that it may end up with by the end of Oscar night.
The “12 Years a Slave,” “Moonlight,” “Green Book,” and “CODA” Path (Best Picture + Actress + Original Screenplay)
In an era where there aren’t many Best Picture sweepers, save for the last two winners, all a film really needs, at the minimum, is one acting win and a Screenplay win only to wrap it up. For a long time, that has seemed to be the most likely path for “Anora” to follow, given its lead in precursor wins for Best Actress and Best Original Screenplay. As such, if Mikey Madison and Sean Baker get one more win in these categories on Oscar night, it really doesn’t need Best Director or Best Editing, too.
However, the four winners in this era who merely won an acting and Screenplay Oscar got their acting prize in Supporting. In that context, “Anora” is very lucky that “Conclave” never got a career narrative going for Isabella Rossellini to steal Best Supporting Actress and that “Emilia Pérez” never posed a threat in Best Adapted Screenplay even at its peak. But while a leading Actress and Screenplay win combination is fairly new these days, it is still just similar enough to the most time-honored successful path in this era.
From the beginning, a Madison win and a Baker Best Original Screenplay win was “Anora’s” easiest road to Best Picture. Despite all the chaos that has unfolded since, it would be ironic if it all ended exactly as many thought it would months ago anyway.
The “Spotlight” Path (Best Picture + Original Screenplay)
If Madison loses to Demi Moore or Fernanda Torres, there is a scenario where “Anora” doesn’t really have to worry that much about it. If it has won Best Original Screenplay around an hour earlier, it will still have hope going into the final envelope no matter what, even if it loses Best Actress, Best Editing, and Best Director afterward. After all, “Spotlight” proved that this exact path to victory was possible nine years ago.
“Spotlight” made history by winning only one Oscar before taking Best Picture anyway, in a way that may look very familiar. Like “Anora,” “Spotlight” was the leading Best Picture winner among critics groups and the leading winner in its Screenplay category before it faced stiff late challenges from a frontrunner in Best Director and Best Actor as well as the leader in the other Screenplay category. Just as “Spotlight” eventually held off “The Revenant” and “The Big Short” despite their respective wins, “Anora” hopes to do the same against “The Brutalist” and “Conclave.”
However, “Anora” has an added advantage because “Spotlight” never won at the PGA or the DGA. In theory, that should make it a much stronger frontrunner than “Spotlight” ever was – but then again, it would make it all the more ironic if “Conclave” beat it with just Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay instead.
Thanks to “Spotlight,” winning with such a slim collection of Oscars isn’t improbable anymore. Therefore, if “Anora” starts off winning Best Original Screenplay, it can actually afford to lose its next few categories before Best Picture – or at least that wouldn’t totally knock it out before the finale.
The “Nomadland” Path (Best Picture + Director + Actress)
There is another win package that was unseen in the modern era until recently. This one came from the already unparalleled year of 2020, when “Nomadland” swept Best Director for Chloe Zhao but still came up empty in Best Adapted Screenplay and every other category until the ending.
Truthfully, all the suspense was removed when “Nomadland’s” Best Picture win was announced earlier than usual – which gave away that the next award in Best Actress would be going to Frances McDormand. But if they had followed the traditional order and announced Best Actress first, a McDormand win would have still spoiled the Best Picture results at that moment. Now, in a telecast that will probably announce categories in a typical order, “Anora” may have a similar result.
If Baker matches his surprise win at the DGA with another triumph over Brady Corbet at the Oscars, and if that follows a loss for Best Original Screenplay, then Best Picture may well be decided by whatever happens to Madison in Best Actress. Should she win in that scenario, then “Anora” should end the night exactly how “Nomadland” did, even if the results are announced a little differently.
The “Argo” And “Crash” Path (Best Picture + Original Screenplay + Editing)
Best Editing has been a wild card the entire season, if only because the ACE Eddies are being held after the Oscars and because the leading critics season Editing champion in “Challengers” wasn’t even Oscar-nominated. The only concrete clue to how this category might turn out came when BAFTA gave “Conclave” its Best Film Editing win – but that doesn’t automatically mean it will repeat at the Oscars.
Should Baker pull the mild upset in Best Film Editing, and should he hold back an upset loss in Best Original Screenplay, then in theory, “Anora” doesn’t need to do anything else the rest of the night. In that scenario, it can lose both Best Director and Best Actress and still walk away with Best Picture, with the same win package that “Argo” had in 2012 and “Crash” had in 2005. What’s more, blocking “Conclave” from its best chance for a win outside of Best Adapted Screenplay might finish it off then and there.
Still, if Baker wins Best Editing but then loses Best Original Screenplay anyway, “Anora” might need at least one other win to breathe easier. Yet if it takes both of those categories, that may end all suspense for Best Picture before the ceremony is halfway over.
The Walt Disney Path (Best Picture + Director + Original Screenplay + Editing)
Right before “Anora” won Best Picture and nothing else at the Critics Choice Awards, everyone was on the brink of asking if Baker would win any Oscars at all, much less his movie. Over 24 hours later, after “Anora” won the PGA and DGA, everyone was on the brink of asking if Baker might actually win more Oscars for one movie than any man in history.
With Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Editing, Baker would be the first man to win four individual Oscars since Walt Disney in 1953, though he did it for four separate projects. It was one thing to suggest Baker was overdue for one Oscar or even two, but to give him four in one year is closer to overkill – yet it is still not outside the realm of possibility.
The (Almost) Total Sweep Path (Best Picture + Director + Actress + Original Screenplay + Editing)
Baker winning all four of his categories while the face of his movie loses would be all too puzzling. But if Madison joins him and gives “Anora” a win in every category in which it is competitive, it would kind of make it the third straight sweeper winner after “Everything Everywhere All at Once” and “Oppenheimer.”
In a year that looked like it wasn’t going to have one dominant movie and has resisted having one film pull away at every turn, this would be the most ironic ending. Of course, since “Anora” would only have one acting win – barring a total shocker from Yura Borisov over Kieran Culkin in Best Supporting Actor – it wouldn’t match “Everything Everywhere All at Once” or “Oppenheimer” in that fashion, although it would have the Screenplay win “Oppenheimer” couldn’t pull off.
Yet of all the potential outcomes, somehow, this one feels like the most impossible, at least in a season like this.
The “Midnight Cowboy” and “Casablanca” Path (Best Picture + Director + Original Screenplay)
Take away Best Editing, and Baker can still tie the record for most individual Oscars for one film with three. While the likes of Bong Joon-Ho, the Daniels, the Coens, and Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu have pulled this off in recent years, it is rarer for a Best Picture film to win with just Best Picture, Best Director, and a Screenplay Oscar only.
Still, it has been pulled off by a couple of classics – first by “Casablanca” in 1942 and then by “Midnight Cowboy” in 1969. Considering that “Midnight Cowboy” was the first and only X-rated film to win Best Picture, having another explicit, independent-minded film about a hustler in the state of New York follow this exact Oscar path may be a real full circle moment.
The “You Can’t Take It with You” And Original “All Quiet on the Western Front” Path (Best Picture + Director)
While winning just Best Picture and a Screenplay Oscar has been the slimmest Oscar resume in the modern era, there are other ways a film can win Best Picture with just one other Oscar. This particular way hasn’t been done since the 1930s and has only been done by a version of “All Quiet on the Western Front” that did win Best Picture, unlike the one in 2022, and by one of Frank Capra’s early classics.
Having Baker pull off a feat that was last done by Capra might be a tall order, yet it might well be a necessary one. If “Anora” loses Best Original Screenplay and Best Editing but then wins Best Director, following that up with a loss in Best Actress would still put it in a very precarious position. Nonetheless, since no movie has won Best Picture after having only won Best Actress, this may be the best bad option it has. Otherwise, there could only be the nuclear option left – albeit one “Anora” already used this season.
The Critics Choice Awards Path (Best Picture Only)
Given how “Anora” is either only slightly ahead or dead even in every category it has a chance to win, it is tempting to start dreaming up really ridiculous scenarios – like the one where it loses every single category before Best Picture, yet still uses the preferential ballot and the weaknesses of “Conclave” and “The Brutalist” to somehow win Best Picture only. After all, this is exactly how it won the Critics’ Choice, right at the moment when it looked dead in the water.
Technically, this has happened more than once, and in fact, it happened three times with “The Broadway Melody” in 1929, “Grand Hotel” in 1932, and “Mutiny on the Bounty” in 1935. Of course, those all happened 90+ years ago when there were far fewer categories and when almost no one involved with the 2024 Oscars had been born yet.
For all the history and the historic Best Picture paths that have been made since then, this one is supposed to be the trulyimpossible scenario. Yet if “Anora” can’t overtake “Conclave” in Best Editing, then somehow loses to either “The Substance” or “A Real Pain” in Best Original Screenplay, there really is no guarantee that either Baker or Madison would turn the tide in Best Director or Best Actress – and the chances of both losing would be 50/50 at minimum.
In that nightmare scenario, by all logic and historical precedent, “Anora” would be heading for a shocking shutout. But in a year where “Anora” has not been a typically secure frontrunner anywhere, maybe winning like no one ever has in modern times is the only bizarre way for this bizarre journey and bizarre season to come to the most bizarre ending we have ever lived to see.
Do you think “Anora” will win at Best Picture at the Oscars this Sunday? If so, what will its win package be? Please let us know on on Next Best Picture’s X account and check out Next Best Picture’s latest Oscar predictions here.
You can follow Robert and hear more of his thoughts on the Oscars & Film on X @Robertdoc1984
