Why the film Nomadland should win Best Picture in the 2021 Oscars
A statistical analysis of historical data
Last year, I introduced a historical statistical model which I used to predict which movie would win Best Picture at the Academy Awards. The model gave the film 1917 the highest chance but the Academy bucked historical trends and chose Parasite as the winner. In my opinion, the Academy got it right, Parasite was the better choice. Read the articles below for more information.
Since last year I have added the 2020 Best Picture nominees to the dataset and added a few more independent variables to make the model more interesting. I added whether a film won the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture Award and the British Academy Film Awards for Best Film.
This year’s Academy Awards will be held on April 25, 2021, much later this year because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Eights films were nominated for Best Picture: The Father; Judas and the Black Messiah; Mank; Minari; Nomadland; Promising Young Woman; Sound of Metal; and The Trial of the Chicago 7. As always, I explain which movie should win the big prize based on historical data.
The Four Strongest Predictors of Best Picture Winners
Just as a reminder, I created a dataset of every Best Picture nominee since the first Oscars in 1929. I collected data on each film’s budget (in 2019 dollars), the number of total Oscar nominations it received, the length of the film (in minutes), whether the film won the Directors Guild of America’s (DGA) award for “Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Theatrical Feature Film”, whether the film won the Producers Guild of America’s (PGA) “Darryl F. Zanuck Award for Outstanding Producer of Theatrical Motion Pictures”, the SAG and BAFTA awards mentioned earlier, and whether the film won Best Picture during the Oscars. ***I also included control variables for each Oscar ceremony, since each year is unique.***
I ran a statistical model (probit if you are wondering) to see which film characteristics are strong predictors of winning Best Picture. Of the seven predictors, four have a statistically significant effect on winning the award. Those four predictors are as follows:
- Number of Total Oscar Nominations: The analysis shows that the more Oscar nominations a film receives the greater the chance that it will win Best Picture. The magic number is still 13 nominations. Any film with 13 nominations has a 41% chance of winning the award (holding all other variables at their means). ***No film this year has received 13 nominations.*** Mank has received the most nominations this year (10).
- DGA Outstanding Directorial Achievement Winner: The analysis shows that a film that wins this award has a 31% chance of winning Best Picture (holding all other variables at their means). Nomadland won the DGA award this year.
- PGA Outstanding Producer Winner: The analysis shows that a film that wins this award has a 44% chance of winning Best Picture (holding all other variables at their means). Nomadland won the PGA award this year.
- SAG Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture Winner: The analysis shows that a film that wins this award has a 41% chance of winning Best Picture (holding all other variables at their means). The Trial of the Chicago 7 won the SAG award this year.
For those who are curious about the effects of the other variables, I found that expensive films (budget) and BAFTA winners were less likely to win the award and longer films (in minutes) were more likely to win. However, these results were not statistically significant.
Probabilities for the 2021 Best Picture Awards
I ran another statistical analysis in order to calculate the probability that a film with the same characteristics as the 2021 nominees have in winning the award. The percentages are based on combinations of the four predictors above (number of nominations, DGA win, PGA win, and SAG win).
The percentages below are the probabilities that each individual film wins the Best Picture award in isolation and not in comparison to the other films. Therefore the probabilities will not add up to 100%.
So without further ado here are the predictions for this year’s Best Picture Awards.
Nomadland: Received 6 Oscar nominations (Best Actress, Cinematography, Directing, Film Editing, Adapted Screenplay, and Best Picture). It also won both the top PGA and DGA awards. The film has a 75.4% chance of winning. Confidence Interval: 32–100%.
The Trial of the Chicago 7: Received 6 Oscar nominations (Best Actor in a Supporting Role, Cinematography, Original Song, Film Editing, Original Screenplay, and Best Picture). It also won the top SAG award. The film has a 36.1% chance of winning. Confidence Interval: 2–71%.
The remaining films all have a small chance of winning. Mank has 10 Oscar nominations and has a 3.3% of winning. The Father; Judas and the Black Messiah; Minari; and Sound of Metal all have 6 Oscar nominations and all have a 5.4% chance of winning. Promising Young Woman received 5 Oscar nominations and has a 1.7% chance of winning.
Overview
As we all know, the Academy is made up of people not historical film data but if history is our guide it looks like Nomadland has the best shot of winning, with a potential upset by The Trial of Chicago 7. We’ll see what happens on Sunday April 25!
