Oscar Stats – Not All Are Created Equal – You Pick Which One’s Gonna Fail This Year

Even though we go on and on about stats and the preferential ballot it is important to remember that all stats are not created equal — and as we’ve been saying for a while now – some stat is going to go down this year. We just don’t know which one.

Here are the main players:

The SAG ensemble stat
Still the big one. Last known failure: 1995 with Braveheart, which won Picture, Director with only a Globe win for director behind it. Failure with preferential ballot: never.
Films that need this stat to fail to win: The Shape of Water, Dunkirk, Call Me By Your Name, The Post, Darkest Hour, Phantom Thread
Films thought to be winners that failed without this stat: Avatar, Zero Dark Thirty, Gravity, The Revenant, La La Land

The Globe Director stat
Having no directing nomination for the Golden Globe and still winning Best Picture. Last known failure: 2005 with Crash. Failure with preferential ballot: never.
Films that need this stat to fail to win: Get Out, Lady Bird, Darkest Hour, Phantom Thread
Films thought to be potential winners but did not have this key stat? Les Miserables, Milk, Juno, Little Miss Sunshine, The Pianist, etc. 

The having no Best Director nomination at the Oscars stat
Last known failure: 2012 – Ben Affleck and Argo. Before that, Driving Miss Daisy in 1989.
Films that need this stat to fail to win: Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (has DGA nomination), Call Me By Your Name, The Post, Darkest Hour

The having no writing or acting nominations stats – films like Hamlet, the Sound of Music and Titanic did it without any writing nominations, but missing that PLUS acting you have to go all the way back to the Grand Hotel stat. 1931/1932.
Films that need this stat to fail to win: Dunkirk

The having no craft nominations stat – last known failure: Ordinary People 1980.
Films that need this stat to fail to win: Lady Bird, Get Out, The Post

So you see, there isn’t a single nominee for Best Picture that doesn’t have SOMETHING against it. One of these is gonna break. Let us know which you think might break in our poll below: