What a difference a day makes. After winning the Critics Choice Award for Best Actor, Paul Giamatti (“The Holdovers“) moved up from third place into second place in our overall Oscar odds. But then the Oscar nominations were announced, and one day later Giamatti has officially become the front-runner, overtaking Cillian Murphy (“Oppenheimer”) for the number-one spot even though Murphy’s movie has the most Oscar nominations (13). But of course, things are never quite that simple when you look at them more closely.
In just one day of Oscar winner predictions, more than 3,000 registered Gold Derby users already placed their bets here in our predictions center, and Giamatti gets leading odds of 17/5 for his performance as a cantankerous boarding school teacher who reluctantly bonds with a troublesome student. He’s predicted to win by four of the seven Expert journalists who have chimed in as of this writing. He’s also backed by six out of seven Gold Derby Editors who cover awards year-round and 12 of the All-Star Top 24 who got the highest prediction scores when you combine multiple years’ Oscar results.
But Golden Globe winner Murphy is still right there on his heels. He gets 71/20 odds with the support of two Experts, one Editor and nine All-Stars. He also has majority support from the Top 24 Users who did the best predicting last year’s Oscar winners, with 13 of those elite pundits favoring his performance as nuclear scientist and father of the atomic bomb J. Robert Oppenheimer. And he’s backed by most of the thousands of everyday Users who make up our largest predictions bloc. Bradley Cooper isn’t out of the running either for his “Maestro” performance as conducting and composing virtuoso Leonard Bernstein. He gets 9/2 odds with support from one Expert, one Top User and two All-Stars.
But we haven’t seen the industry’s top peer group awards bodies announce their winners yet. The SAG and BAFTA Awards should tell us a lot about the race since those groups actually overlap with Oscar voters. Remember that last year the Oscars perfectly matched the SAG Awards’ four individual acting winners. However, that meant none of the four BAFTA acting winners ended up repeating at the Oscars, so even peer group awards could potentially lead us astray. Will you be following their lead this year, or have you already made up your mind about who will win?
Make your predictions at Gold Derby now. Download our free and easy app for Apple/iPhone devices or Android (Google Play) to compete against legions of other fans plus our experts and editors for best prediction accuracy scores. See our latest prediction champs. Can you top our esteemed leaderboards next? Always remember to keep your predictions updated because they impact our latest racetrack odds, which terrify Hollywood chiefs and stars. Don’t miss the fun. Speak up and share your huffy opinions in our famous forums where 5,000 showbiz leaders lurk every day to track latest awards buzz. Everybody wants to know: What do you think? Who do you predict and why?
