2025 OSCARs predictions

Telegraph

26-02-2025

(According to data)
Best picture
Anora
Best Director
Brady Corbet
Best Actor
Adrien Brody
Best Actress
Demi Moore
Best Supporting Actor
Kieran Culkin
Best Supporting Actress
Zoe Saldana
Irini Economides Data Scientist and. Robbie Collin Chief Film Critic
26 February 2025 11:33am GMT
Forecasting the results of the Academy Awards has been a longstanding game among both critics and pundits in the weeks – and in some especially tragic cases, months – ahead of the event. But in the age of Big Data, are we missing a trick? We have close to a century's worth of intel ripe for the digital crunching, so could the Academy's earlier choices throw valuable light on its impending ones? Even normal cinema-goers can often instinctively recognise an 'Oscar movie' when they see it – so there must be some common features and patterns lurking in the form, which a computer might spot more readily than humans blinkered by personal preference.
Of course, if there are, the worrying upshot would be that the ultimate piece of Oscar bait could be algorithmically reverse-engineered into existence: then again, perhaps it's already happening, which would at least explain CODA and Green Book. Below is the winning lineup that the data says will come to pass on Sunday night, along with my [Robbie] own thoughts on each pick.
The data predicts
Best Picture
Anora
Multiple nominations
Anora follows in the 2020s tradition of a stand-out film with multiple nominations, with six nominations for Picture, Director, Actress, Supporting Actor, Editing and Original Screenplay
Audience approval is key
Anora received a 89 per cent public Rotten Tomatoes score. Emilia Pérez, once a frontrunner, has received only 17 per cent, with audience ratings being a key metric for Best Picture wins
The clues of Oscars success lie in its precursor awards. When it comes to snatching that Best Picture trophy, the biggest indicators of success are the Golden Globes, Critics Choice and BAFTA awards – a promising pattern for The Brutalist, Anora and Conclave, this year's victors. Meanwhile, Golden Globe winner Emilia Pérez, once a frontrunner, has recently faltered with controversy and tanking audience review scores putting it out of contention.
The diversity in Best Picture winners across the award circuit has made this year's race unpredictable. Although Anora and The Brutalist have both received a package of nominations across the major categories, The Brutalist has so far won a wider range of awards, indicating support across the board. However, our model considers the Critics Choice awards to be the best indicator of a Best Picture Oscar win, and so places Anora in the top spot despite The Brutalist's strong performance this award season.
Our model has made one thing clear: Anora and The Brutalist are saved by the absence of a Czech director nominee this year, with our model ranking Czech direction as one of the biggest success factors thanks to the strong Best Picture precedent Miloš Forman (Amadeus, One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest) has set, skewing the data.
Robbie agrees
His prediction: Anora
'Skewing', above, is the operative word: with respect to Mother Data and all those who mine her, there's something rather lopsided about forecasting Oscar season based on track records. It is, and always has been, an entirely vibes-based practice. That's not to say the vibes and stats don't line up once in a while – and this year, for the most part, they do. But old trends don't meaningfully plug into the whims of a voting body (i.e., the Academy) which has a) undergone drastic demographic change over the last decade, and b) is more bothered about sending a message to the here and now – or at least the progressive American bit of it – than aligning with age-old traditions.
If they were, The Brutalist would be a Best Picture shoo-in. It's the most accomplished nominee (which you'd hope would be enough on its own), plus it's about the US as both a haven and dais for immigrants and superficially affable plutocrats who turn bad – both current hot topics. And it shares some DNA with great history-concertina-ing making-of-America epics of the past, such as the first and second Godfather films, two of the prior Best Picture picks to have aged best. I'll be overjoyed if it wins.
But that sort of complex, compromised grandeur doesn't feel like the sort of thing voters are after this year. A month and a bit into The Trump Supremacy, they're more likely to want to salve their wounds with passion, heart and indie joie-de-vivre. In 2017, the film to dish up most of that was Moonlight: in 2025, it's the tremendous Anora, which is fortunately my second favourite.
The data predicts
Best Director
Brady Corbet
3h 34 mins
Longer runtime is associated with Best Director wins, and Brady Corbet takes full advantage of this with his 3 hour 34 min long film, by far the longest of this year's nominations.
Double win
Brady Corbet is favourite thanks to his double win at the Golden Globes and the Baftas
As with Best Picture, Best Director wins at the Golden Globes and Baftas are a big giveaway of the top contenders, so our model puts Brady Corbet in the lead thanks to his double win. Anora's Sean Baker, although a critics' favourite, has yet to secure critical wins at the Golden Globes, Baftas or the Critics Choice Awards, diminishing his odds with our model ranking him in third place behind James Mangold for A Complete Unknown.
Heritage is also a factor in Best Director wins. Mexican directors are the ones who hold the statistical favour thanks to the string of victories from Alejandro G. Iñárritu (Birdman, The Revenant), Alfonso Cuarón (Roma and Gravity), and Guillermo del Toro (The Shape of Water).
Robbie agrees
His prediction: Brady Corbet
Best Director is often an award for ambition and nerve, and however many hours of The Brutalist voters actually watched, they'll be familiar with just how relentlessly ingenious – and financially savvy, given it somehow cost less than $10m – its production was. The shortlist is nicely balanced, with three quote-unquote visionary auteurs (Baker, Corbet, The Substance's Coralie Fargeat), one old-school studio journeyman (James Mangold) and whatever-on-earth Jacques Audiard is, but for sheer chutzpah, Corbet must have this sewn up.
The data predicts
Best Actress
Demi Moore
Age restriction
Best Actress wins are often tied to R-rated films, which feature mature themes and thus a weightier performance. With Anora and The Substance carrying this rating their leads are well placed to take advantage of this pattern.
Older actresses
Our model puts fan favorite Mikey Madison (Anora), born in 1999, at a disadvantage, as no acting Oscars have been awarded to anyone born after 1991. At 59 and 62, Fernanda Torres and Demi Moore have better odds.
The fight for Lead Actress is a three-way showdown between Demi Moore (The Substance), Fernanda Torres (I'm Still Here) and Mikey Madison (Anora). Moore and Torres have taken an early lead with Golden Globes wins but the lack of Oscar nominations for I'm Still Here undercuts Torres' chances.
Meanwhile, fan favourite Mikey Madison's odds were significantly improved after an unexpected win at the Baftas. However, Madison faces a major hurdle: the Oscars have recently heavily favoured older actors, with no acting awards given to anyone born after 1991. A 1999-born Madison win would be an unexpected deviation from historical patterns, bringing an end to this trend.
Robbie disagrees
His prediction: Fernanda Torres
Look, maybe it's just down to a legion of mad online Brazilians, but the Fernanda Torres (I'm Still Here) Best Actress campaign has a marathon-runner momentum that can't be ignored. Months ago, Demi Moore felt like an outside shot, but that Globe win (and excellent acceptance speech) in early January catapulted her into the Oscar heir-apparent slot.
A lot has happened since then, though, and I wonder if Emilia Pérez's spectacular wipeout will have corralled more internationally minded voters towards Torres, who really is excellent and dazzlingly subtle in a more palatable film than Moore's flesh-ripping body horror The Substance – and, let's not forget, picked up the other Best Actress Golden Globe on the Drama side of that earlier ceremony. It would be an upset, yes – but not an unforeseeable one.
The data predicts
Best Actor
Adrien Brody
Mixing tech and art
The Brutalist can be added to the ever-growing list of films using AI to enhance the picture, with it being used to generate architectural ideas and merge Adrien Brody's voice with another's to produce a more authentic Hungarian accent.
Drama
The five most recent Best Actors have all starred in dramas, two being biographical dramas. It's been 13 years since a comedy film has produced a winning lead actor, no comedic actor has won the award since Jean Dujardin (The Artist) in 2011.
In the Best Actor race, a film's overall number of nominations is key. Adrien Brody's odds are bolstered by The Brutalist securing nominations in five out of the six main Oscar categories. His performance was recognised with a triple win at the Critics Choice Awards, Golden Globes and Baftas, all pointing to an inevitable Oscar win. Ralph Fiennes's (Conclave) chances, however, have been boosted by his film's receiving the Critics Choice Cast Ensemble award, which is also correlated with Best Actor wins, marking him as a challenger and leaving room for an unexpected turn in the race.
Oscars history strongly favours dramatic rather than comedic performances, with Best Actors often being found in dramatic and biographical roles. In fact, the past five Best Actors have starred in dramas, with two portraying real-life figures. This year all the Best Actor nominees star in dramas, further illustrating the Academy's preferences.
Robbie disagrees
His prediction: Timothée Chalamet
All right, this is irritating. I had Timothée Chalamet (A Complete Unknown) pegged as my shock Best Actor winner almost a month ago (as correspondence with the Telegraph's visual journalism desk will attest), but over the weekend he won the equivalent prize at the Screen Actors' Guild, which must, with Brody, now make him joint favourite. Brody's performance is the better of the two, but Chalamet's has enough attention to detail to please the old guard and enough Gen Z appeal to bewitch the new.
Plus the 29-year-old heartthrob is one of the few brand-new genuine stars the industry has successfully made for itself over the last 10 years, and an Oscar is the perfect way to shore up their investment. My heart will break for Brody if it comes to pass, though he himself won Best Actor at 29 for his performance in The Pianist. If Chalamet nabs it, he'll nab the youngest-ever-winner record too.
The data predicts
Best Supporting Actress
Zoe Saldaña
SAG Award winner
It has been nine years since a winning Supporting Actress didn't also win the Supporting Actress SAG award.
Box office uncertainty
Best Supporting Actress wins tend to be negatively correlated with box office revenue, but since Emilia Pérez is a Netflix release with limited theatrical screenings, this factor is difficult to gauge.
In recent years, SAG awards have been an infallible predictor of Supporting Actress wins, with the five most recent Oscar winners also clinching SAG awards. With Zoe Saldaña's SAG win, she's expected to secure the Oscar.
Demographics can offer an edge in the Supporting Actress race. Historically, nominees have performed better the older their director is, and with Emilia Pérez's Jacques Audiard turning 73 this spring, Saldaña can add another favourable variable to her prospects.
Robbie agrees
His prediction: Zoe Saldaña
One of the most fascinating things about Netflix's Emilia Pérez catastrophe is the extent to which Zoe Saldaña was able to walk away from it unscathed. She's on screen for almost 58 minutes of the film – longer than the 52 minutes we get of Best Actress nominee Carla Sofía Gascón – so perhaps while her co-star (entirely reasonably) became the face of the scandal, Saldaña was able to soak up voters' residual affections for the film itself. Anyway, she's won almost everything so far this year, and there's no reason to expect the Oscars to be different.
The data predicts
Best Supporting Actor
Kieran Culkin
Perfect timing
Since the early 2000s Best Supporting Actor winning films have been released around 131 days – around four months – before the Oscars ceremony. A Real Pain was released 121 days before the Academy Awards.
Longer screen time
Culkin's screen time is the longest of all nominated supporting actors this year, making up 58 minutes, or 65 per cent, of A Real Pain – which aligns with a notable correlation between screen presence and Oscar success in this category.
Supporting Actor is perhaps the category most predicted by the precursor awards, and Kieran Culkin's wins at the Golden Globes, the Critics Choice and the Baftas strongly set him up for the Oscar win. Additionally, Culkin's screen time is the longest of all nominated supporting actors this year, making up 58 minutes, or 65 per cent, of A Real Pain – which aligns with a notable correlation between screen presence and Oscar success in this category.
Timing also matters, as films released further from the Oscars tend to fare better for their Supporting Actors. Culkin's advantage is reinforced as this year A Real Pain was the second oldest film, released in November 2024, following The Apprentice's release in October.
Robbie agrees
His prediction: Kieran Culkin
Another dubious nomination: as anyone who's seen A Real Pain will know, Culkin and Jesse Eisenberg are obviously co-leads. But it's hard to begrudge the Succession star his virtually unbroken streak of success this season: like Saldaña, he's won almost everything, despite some hefty opponents in the form of Guy Pearce, Edward Norton and Jeremy Strong. (For contender no. 5, Anora's Yura Borisov, the nomination is the win.)
Pearce's lack of traction especially is a puzzle – his self-made billionaire patron in The Brutalist is a pitch-perfect character study that moves from darkly comic to devastating, and feels like the most obvious winner of the set. But perhaps in the light of the Israel-Palestine war, Culkin's culturally conflicted Jewish backpacker has struck an almighty chord, which seems certain to resonate all the way to Sunday night.
Methodology
We created six machine learning models – one for each major Oscar category – to predict the nominee most likely to win the award.
These models were created using a range of inputs, including data from previous Oscar wins going back to the 1970s and other major film awards such as SAG, BAFTAs, Golden Globes, as well as information about the nominees (age, nationality, screentime, etc) and the characteristics of the films they feature in (runtime, genre, budget, etc).
We used a gradient boosting classification model, a common machine learning model for predictive tasks. The underlying algorithm creates simple decision trees, which it then combines to improve predictive accuracy, making it particularly effective at capturing nuances in the data.
Credits
Data modelling and words by Irini Economides | Additional data analysis by Ben Butcher | Storytelling by Mariana Hallal and Rachel Matthews | Design by Ben Hutchings, Olga Petrusewicz and Tayo Kopfer.