The Academy Award for Best Picture Doesn’t Always Go to the Early Front Runner

How Often Does the Early Front Runner for Best Picture Win?

In this year’s Oscars race, there are several movies which were pegged for early favorites to win, but the early favorite doesn’t always secure the award for Best Picture.

This year has always had a favorite to win Best Picture since the spring when Everything Everywhere All at Once came out late last March. An article in The Hollywood Reporter just cited the fact that the first front runner doesn’t always win with examples to back it up. I will be using my own examples to help prove the theory that the early front runner doesn’t always secure the Academy Award for Best Picture.

Let’s take it back to last year when West Side Story came out. Steven Spielberg’s movie was almost going to be guaranteed the victory for the Best Picture Oscar during the months that came before the picture’s release. When it bombed at the box-office, perhaps, Oscar voters looked elsewhere and a little movie that nobody really thought too much about took the prize: CODA. Don’t get me wrong, People enjoyed CODA a lot and it was a terrific film but to think it would beat out Spielberg’s West Side Story or Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast was unthinkable earlier in the race until the actual Oscar nominations confirmed that people did really love CODA.

In 2005, Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain was almost guaranteed the gold for Best Picture and a movie that was released months before it, Crash, was hardly in the picture until much later on when the dust cleared and, for some reason, Brokeback Mountain didn’t secure the Best Picture Oscar. Crash did although Ang Lee won for Best Director for Brokeback Mountain. Was Crash even a possibility as a front runner earlier in the year? Not to my knowledge of the way the year in film was predicted to go down at the Academy Awards.

This year, Top Gun: Maverick took flight as one of the movies that some people believe belongs on the Mount Rushmore of sequels. That “Mount Rushmore” includes movies like The Dark Knight, The Godfather Part II and Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. Could Top Gun: Maverick secure a Best Picture victory? I’m not so sure at this particular point in time.

Then, Spielberg’s The Fabelmans hit this month and became a front-runner. Keep in mind, Avatar: The Way of Water and Babylon haven’t even come out yet and could change things significantly. I think The Fabelmans has a real shot at Best Picture, though. It could be a way to right the wrong of Spielberg losing for West Side Story though CODA was still a great choice.

In short, keep in mind that even Titanic shocked audiences when it won Best Picture. It wasn’t the front runner that year. L.A. Confidential was initially until Titanic made a fortune and won the hearts of America where there was absolutely no way it could lose. So, I agree with The Hollywood Reporter. The early front runner doesn’t always win Best Picture. But, The Fabelmans could certainly pull off a win if Avatar: The Way of Water or Babylon don’t fully live up to expectations.

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