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The BAFTAs, British Academy of Film and Television Arts, have changed their voting procedures a few times since they pushed their awards back before the Oscars (around 2000). Before 2012, according to Grok:
- In many craft/technical categories (e.g., director, cinematography, editing, production design, etc.), specialist chapters played a strong role early on—often guiding or heavily influencing longlists and nominees via their votes.
- Full membership voted in the first round (with chapter preferences sometimes highlighted on longlists to guide them), but chapters alone often decided winners in below-the-line categories.
After 2012:
This shifted power toward specialist chapters in many categories:
- Chapters alone decided nominees in categories like director, adapted/original screenplay, cinematography, costume design, editing, make-up & hair, original music, production design, sound, and visual effects.
- Full membership then voted for the winners in those same categories.
However, Best Film and the acting categories are decided by the entire film membership for nominees and winners. To put this to the test, I built two charts. One that tracks the major categories of BAFTA in relation to the Oscars (color coded) and the other is just BAFTA.
The only slight distinction is that there were more matches for Best Picture before for some reason than there were after 2012, but that could be due less to how the BAFTAs changed and more to how the Oscars changed throughout that period, not just with the expanded ballot but with demographics, social justice, superhero movies, etc. The UK and the US are worlds apart and that is obvious by how many of these winners came down. It’s also that they only have five Best Picture contenders and don’t use the preferential ballot.
Now, let’s remove the Oscars and just look at how BAFTA has changed:
So what is immediately apparent is that once the entire membership could vote on the winners, you see more unformity with Picture+Director. However, you see less match with Screenplay. That tells me that voters are less likely to “spread the wealth” with individual branches who might want to just vote for the movie they like. If you’re voting in all categories, you might split it up. That’s the only explanation I can think of. But the really key thing to note is that just once since 2012 has Picture and Director gone to the same movie and that was All Quiet on the Western Front. Stranger still, it’s only happened three times since 2000 and only once, Slumdog Millionaire, did the film ultimately win Best Picture.
Unless I have it wrong, that is what this chart is telling me. And it’s why I will predict Hamnet to win Adapted. If it wins all three categories, however, it will win many of the below the line categories as well. As in:
Movies like Gravity, Slumdog, All Quiet, Oppenheimer do pretty well in the techs, even when they win big in the majors. Slumdog Millionaire is a good model, perhaps, though it did not win any acting categories.
Taking a closer look at Screenplay:
They do tend to spread the wealth in the post-2012 era, for whatever that means. All Quiet, Conclave did not win acting awards either. So I don’t know. We’re either looking at a major sweeper where One Battle breaks one award stat after another or else they spread the wealth.
Here are our predictions.
I do think the BAFTAs could influence how the Oscars go, especially if there are big surprises, which there might be. I’m not expecting any, that’s for sure, but you never know. My predictions for this week:
Best Picture
1. One Battle after Another (Warner Bros.)
2. Sinners (Warner Bros.)
3. Hamnet (Focus Features)
4. Marty Supreme (A24)
5. Frankenstein (Netflix)
6. Bugonia (Focus Features)
7. F1 (Apple)
8. The Secret Agent (Neon)
9. Sentimental Value (Neon)
10. Train Dreams (Netflix)
Best Director
1. One Battle after Another, Paul Thomas Anderson
2. Sinners, Ryan Coogler
3. Hamnet, Chloé Zhao
4. Marty Supreme, Josh Safdie
5. Sentimental Value, Joachim Trier
Best Actor
1. Timothée Chalamet in Marty Supreme
2. Leonardo DiCaprio in One Battle after Another
3. Wagner Moura in The Secret Agent
4. Michael B. Jordan in Sinners
5. Ethan Hawke in Blue Moon
Best Actress
1. Jessie Buckley in Hamnet
2. Rose Byrne in If I Had Legs I’d Kick You
3. Kate Hudson in Song Sung Blue
4. Renate Reinsve in Sentimental Value
5. Emma Stone in Bugonia
Best Supporting Actor
1. Stellan Skarsgård in Sentimental Value
2. Benicio Del Toro in One Battle after Another
3. Jacob Elordi in Frankenstein
4. Delroy Lindo in Sinners
5. Sean Penn in One Battle after Another
Best Supporting Actress
1. Teyana Taylor in One Battle after Another
2. Amy Madigan in Weapons
3. Wunmi Mosaku in Sinners
4. Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas in Sentimental Value
5. Elle Fanning in Sentimental Value
Best Adapted Screenplay
1. One Battle after Another
2. Hamnet
3. Train Dreams
4. Bugonia
5. Frankenstein
Best Original Screenplay
1. Sinners
2. Marty Supreme
3. Sentimental Value
4. It Was Just an Accident
5. Blue Moon
Best Editing
1. One Battle after Another
2. F1
3. Sinners
4. Marty Supreme
5. Sentimental Value
Best International Feature
1. Sentimental Value
2. The Secret Agent
3. It Was Just an Accident
4. Sirāt
5. The Voice of Hind Rajab
Animated Feature
1. KPop Demon Hunters
2. Arco
3. Elio
4. Little Amélie or the Character of Rain
5. Zootopia 2
Best Animated Short Film
1. Butterfly
2. Retirement Plan
3. Forevergreen
4. The Girl Who Cried Pearls
5. The Three Sisters
Best Casting
1. Sinners
2. One Battle after Another
3. Hamnet
4. Marty Supreme
5. The Secret Agent
Best Cinematography
1. One Battle after Another
2. Sinners
2. Frankenstein
3. Marty Supreme
5. Train Dreams
Best Costume Design
1. Frankenstein
2. Sinners
3. Hamnet
4. Marty Supreme
5. Avatar: Fire and Ash
Best Documentary Feature
1. The Perfect Neighbor
2. The Alabama Solution
3. Come See Me in the Good Light
4. Cutting through Rocks
5. Mr. Nobody against Putin
Best Documentary Short
1. All the Empty Rooms
2. Armed Only with a Camera: The Life and Death of Brent Renaud
3. Children No More: Were and Are Gone
4. The Devil Is Busy
5. Perfectly a Strangeness
Best Live Action Short
1. Two People Exchanging Saliva
2. Butcher’s Stain
3. The Singers
4. A Friend of Dorothy
5. Jane Austen’s Period Drama
Best Makeup and Hairstyling
1. Frankenstein
2. Sinners
3. Kokuho
4. The Smashing Machine
5. The Ugly Stepsister
Original Score
Sinners, Ludwig Goransso
One Battle after Another, Jonny Greenwood
Bugonia. Jerskin Fendrix
Frankenstein. Alexandre Desplat
Hamnet. Max Richter
Best Original Song
1. I Lied To You from Sinners
2. Golden from KPop Demon Hunters
3. Train Dreams from Train Dreams
4. Dear Me from Diane Warren: Relentless
5. Sweet Dreams Of Joy from Viva Verdi!
Best Production Design
1. Frankenstein
2. Sinners
3. Hamnet
4. Marty Supreme
5. One Battle after Another
Original Sound
1. F1
2. Sirāt
3. One Battle after Another
4. Sinners
5. Frankenstein
Best Visual Effects
1. Avatar: Fire and Ash
2. Sinners
3. F1
4. Jurassic World Rebirth
5. The Lost Bus
Have a great weekend…
