Why a ‘Sinners’ Best Picture Win Isn’t Guaranteed, Despite Record Nominations

When “Sinners” shattered the nomination record at the Oscars, I naturally heard a lot of speculation over whether this meant the film was on its way to a Best Picture win.

It’s definitely on the table. But getting the most nominations doesn’t always mean you’re winning the big one.

There are a lot of different paths a film can take to win Best Picture. Sometimes, a technical juggernaut like “Oppenheimer” or “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” goes on a massive tear. Other years, movies like “Argo” will walk away with only three trophies to their name.

Let’s not forget, “All About Eve” and “Titanic” both won Best Picture after their 14 nominations (the record before “Sinners” got 16), while “La La Land” lost to “Moonlight,” which had six fewer nominations and three fewer wins.

TheWrap’s Awards Tracker does a great job at reading the tea leaves to see what nominees have the best shot at winning Oscars. But there are a lot of factors that help a movie win Best Picture — and not all of them fit into a single percentage.

So let’s break down what Oscar nominations and wins mean on the road to Best Picture.

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You don’t win Best Picture alone

When predicting Best Picture, try to look for a movie’s “path” or “package.” What other Oscars could a movie win to prove it has support?

Rarely will a film nab Best Picture without a few other notches in its belt. Only three movies won the Academy’s top prize without a single other win to complement: “The Broadway Melody,” “Grand Hotel” and “Mutiny on the Bounty.” All three were winners of early Oscar ceremonies in the 1930s. Now, this feat seems basically impossible.

Six more Best Picture winners left the Oscars with only two Academy Awards. In 2016, “Spotlight” only won Best Original Screenplay before the final award. Before that, the last two-trophy winner was “The Greatest Show on Earth,” which won the now defunct Best Writing (Motion Picture Story) category.

On average, a Best Picture wins about five Oscars. Recent movies like “Everything Everywhere All at Once” and “Oppenheimer” cleared this number with seven wins each, while COVID-era winners “Nomadland” and “CODA” got only three. 

In fairness, “CODA” only picked up three nominations — far below the average nine nominations that a Best Picture winner usually enters the ceremony with.

Fun fact: In 1933, “Grand Hotel” became the first and only film to win Best Picture without being nominated in any other category.

How much do nominations matter?

Across 97 Academy Awards ceremonies, 60 Best Picture prizes went to the movie that got the most nominations. Since the voting system for Best Picture changed in 2009, however, that number has gone down to 6 out of 16 — or a decrease from roughly 62% to 37.5%.

So it used to be a little more than a coin flip’s chance, and now it’s a little less. 

More and more often, we’ll see movies like “The Power of the Dog,” “Mank” and “Joker” miss out on Best Picture after cleaning up on nomination morning. This decrease probably has something to do with the Academy’s switch in Best Picture voting to a more complicated preferential ballot system.

Under this new method, the Academy uses ballot rankings to determine the true consensus favorite instead of the film that the most voters named #1. Basically, voters order the 10 Best Picture nominees from favorite to least favorite. In each round, the movie with the fewest #1 votes out of the still-eligible films is eliminated until there’s only one Best Picture left standing.

If you haven’t seen it, my editor Steve Pond created a fantastic breakdown of this closer to when the changeover happened.

What happens more often is that the movie that wins the most Oscars in a given year also wins Best Picture. 77 out of 97 times, Best Picture was given to the movie that won the most awards at the ceremony (this happened every year from 1979 to 2004).

Since 2009, the movie that won the most awards was also crowned Best Picture 10 out of 16 times. That’s a significant drop from 77 out of 97 (62.5% instead of 79.4%), but still pretty strong.

Basically, getting nominations doesn’t matter unless you win awards. Big surprise, right?

But you do learn a lot about the kinds of movies that win Best Picture when you look at the movies that weren’t nomination or win leaders. Films like “Gravity” and “Dune” may have won the most statues, but “12 Years a Slave” and “CODA” were their night’s winners.

Putting “Everything Everywhere All at Once” and “Oppenheimer” aside, we’ve seen repeated instances in recent years of technical marvels, lauded with below-the-line nominations and wins, losing out to relatively smaller movies.

This is where above-the-line support comes in.

Watch me break down how nomination leaders perform at the Oscars.

You need above-the-line love

While your average Best Picture winner takes home about five Oscars in total, around three of these usually come from your above-the-line categories: directing, acting, screenwriting (and obviously Best Picture itself).

Some of these prizes are more important than others. 70 of the 97 Best Picture winners also won Best Director. Paul Thomas Anderson recently won at the Directors Guild Awards, which has predicted the Oscar winner all but eight times across 77 years.

63 Best Picture winners took home one screenwriting award or the other. 57 had at least one acting winner attached (though the Academy definitely favors male performances in its Best Pictures).

Winning technical categories doesn’t hurt, but films usually need above-the-line wins to take the top prize. The last movie to not win any of the current ATL categories beyond Best Picture was 1953’s “The Greatest Show on Earth,” and even that won the aforementioned Motion Picture Story award when it was still around.

Right now, our Awards Tracker gives “One Battle After Another” the best odds, with the film predicted to win Best Director, Best Supporting Actress and Best Adapted Screenplay — that’s a strong path. Based on how other awards shows have gone this season, the Tracker also gives “One Battle” a 66.67% chance of winning Best Picture before even considering its above-the-line package.

So, “One Battle After Another” may seem bulletproof, but if it loses Adapted Screenplay to something like “Hamnet,” a screenwriting/Best Actress package may be all Chloé Zhao needs for another Best Picture win. “Sinners,” likewise, would make a strong case for the top prize if it won something beyond Original Screenplay, like Best Supporting Actor or Best Director.

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