The Race for the BAFTAs 2019: Early Analysis

Written by Marcus Kyte 17/01/2019

For better or worse, the film awards season is well and truly upon us. With the usual mix of consternation and confusion bound to be generated by this year’s omissions, snubs and eventual winners, we thought we would take a look at each contender’s potential chances at the BAFTAs in a more analytical light.

Our prediction model uses nominee’s performance in other awards to gauge their potential performance at the BAFTAs. We allocate each award a points weighting based on how closely the previous winners have matched with BAFTA winners over the past 20 years – in each category, awards which have mirrored the BAFTAs most frequently are worth the most points. Each 2019 BAFTA nominee then receives points throughout the season based on their results in other awards, a win earns the full amount of points for that award while nominees receive one-fifth of the winner’s allocation. Assuming that the voting bodies of each award, and their voting tendencies, remain broadly consistent, then past performance should be a good indicator for how nominee’s BAFTA chances develop over the course of the awards season.

At roughly the halfway point in the season, a number of major categories appear to be highly competitive with multiple contenders still in the running – much could change though with several notable awards, including various filmmaker guilds and the London Critics’ awards, still to be decided before the BAFTAs ceremony on February 10th.

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1 Best Film Netflix’s Roma is the current frontrunner for Best Film after its recent win at the Critics’ Choice awards, with a similar points total to several previous winners at this stage. This is particularly impressive considering that, as a foreign language film, it was ineligible for Best Film at some key ceremonies used in our model (such as the Golden Globes). Its success is likely to continue in coming weeks given Netflix’s reportedly very high campaign budget for the film.

120 12 Years a Slave

Critics’ 100 Choice

80 Golden Globes Roma 60 Chicago New York Critics 40 Critics A Star Is Born The King’s Speech BlacKkKlansman Green Book 20 The Favourite

0 Previous 8 winners 25/11 02/12 09/12 16/12 23/12 30/12 06/01 13/01 at this stage

It may face some close competition though; the awards performance of A Star Is Born and BlacKkKlansman have so far been similar to 2011 winner The King’s Speech, which is itself an outlier among recent BAFTA winners – they will be hoping to match the wild success which that film achieved during the latter half of the 2011 awards season. Roma’s closest competitor for the BAFTA may, however, end up being The Favourite; despite not performing as well

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in US awards, it is generating significant interest in the UK compared to the other three contenders, which feature more American material.

2 Best Director Alfonso Cuarón is the clear favourite in the Best Director race for his work on Roma, having more-or-less swept the director categories across the awards season so far. Unless a different winner is chosen by the Directors Guild of America (usually seen as an authoritative voice for director awards) in the coming weeks, any other result at the BAFTAs would be a big surprise – with no eventual winner having made up such ground in the last eight years.

Critics’ Choice David Fincher

100 Golden Globes Alfonso Cuarón

80

Online Film Critics 60

New York 40 Critics Alejandro G. Iñárritu

20 Bradley Cooper Spike Lee Yorgos Lanthimos Pawel Pawlikowski 0 25/11 02/12 09/12 16/12 23/12 30/12 06/01 13/01 Previous 8 winners at this stage

3 Best Actor The race for Best Actor is extremely close, but currently appears to be a two-horse race between Rami Malek, winner at the Golden Globes, and Christian Bale, winner at the Critics’ Choice awards; though Malek’s performance as Freddie Mercury may end up endearing itself to British voters better than the Bale’s portrayal of US politician Dick Cheney. It would seem unwise to rule out the other nominees at this point, however, as they all have a relatively low points total compared to most recent winners. This is in part due to Ethan Hawke’s work on First Reformed which won many critics awards early in the season, some of which are often good bellwethers for the BAFTAs, yet not receiving a BAFTA nomination – likely due to the comparatively small presence of the film in UK cinemas.

Casey Affleck 180

160

140

120 Golden Critics’ 100 Globes Choice

80 SAG nominations 60 Christian Bale Rami Malek 40 Bradley Cooper Jean Dujardin 20 Viggo Mortensen

0 Steve Coogan 25/11 02/12 09/12 16/12 23/12 30/12 06/01 13/01 Previous 8 winners at this stage

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4 Best Actress Best Actress is another highly competitive category. Glenn Close, the early favourite coming into the awards season, is currently out-in-front for her performance in The Wife after recent successes at the Golden Globes and Critics’ Choice awards. There are three contenders close behind though, all of whom have won a significant award this season; substantial British interest in Olivia Colman, and The Favourite, means she probably has the best chance to succeed out of the three. The results of the Screen Actors Guild awards should shed some light on the likely frontrunners in a few weeks’ time.

Cate Blanchett

100 Critics’ Choice

80 Golden Globes Boston 60 Film Critics Glenn Close

40 Lady Gaga Melissa McCarthy Olivia Colman 20 Emma Stone

0 Viola Davis 25/11 02/12 09/12 16/12 23/12 30/12 06/01 13/01 Previous 8 winners at this stage

5 Outstanding British Film Due to the small number of comparable awards, we’ve instead considered the potential performance of the nominees for Outstanding British Film based on the number of nominations for other awards in the five major categories (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress and Best Screenplay). The Favourite currently leads with 40 such nominations and looks most likely to win after securing 12 BAFTA nods, and being the only above film also nominated for Best Film. You Were Never Really Here and Bohemian Rhapsody have also had strong outings, though the former has primarily been recognised in awards voted for solely by critics while the latter’s nominations have mostly come for Rami Malek’s performance. 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50

The Favourite Critics’ London BIFA Choice Critics BAFTAs 40

You Were Never London BIFA Really Here Critics 13 British Awards Bohemian Other Rhapsody 10

Stan & Ollie 5

Beast BIFA 4

McQueen 0

Previous 8 winners at this stage

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