The Brief

The 98th Academy Awards on Sunday night features the closest Best Picture race in years, with Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another holding wins from the DGA, PGA, Golden Globes, and BAFTAs, while Ryan Coogler’s Sinners counters with the SAG ensemble, WGA, and ACE awards. Both films’ precursor profiles are historically undefeated — meaning one streak must break. A Sinners victory would make Coogler the first Black filmmaker to win Best Director in the Academy’s nearly century-long history.

The Report

The 98th Academy Awards ceremony takes place Sunday evening at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, with Conan O’Brien returning as host after a well-received debut last year that delivered a five-year ratings high. The broadcast begins at 7 p.m. ET on ABC and Hulu, with 24 competitive categories — including the new Best Casting award — to be decided across what producers and pundits have called the most confounding race in recent memory.

At the centre of the night sits a statistical paradox. One Battle After Another, Anderson’s black comedy adapted from Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland, has assembled the most commanding set of precursor wins in years: the Directors Guild, Producers Guild, BAFTA, Golden Globe, and Critics Choice awards. No film holding that combination has ever lost Best Picture. Sinners, Coogler’s vampire horror set in the 1932 Mississippi Delta, holds the SAG ensemble, Writers Guild, and ACE Eddie awards. No film holding that combination has lost Best Picture since 1995. One record breaks on Sunday. The question is which.

The two films compete in 11 categories — the most ever for two films at the Oscars — and between them account for 29 of the night’s nominations. Sinners set an all-time record with 16 nominations, surpassing the 14 previously shared by All About Eve, Titanic, and La La Land. It is also the year’s dominant box office performer among nominees, with $370 million worldwide against a $90–100 million budget. One Battle After Another earned $209 million globally, falling short of its estimated break-even point despite becoming Anderson’s highest-grossing film.

The acting races have shifted considerably in the final weeks. Michael B. Jordan, who plays criminal twin brothers in Sinners, seized Best Actor momentum after winning the SAG award on March 1, overtaking Timothée Chalamet, whose campaign for Marty Supreme stumbled following a public backlash over comments dismissing ballet and opera. Best Actress is considered the night’s clearest lock, with Jessie Buckley having swept all four major precursors for Hamnet. Sean Penn holds a narrow lead in Best Supporting Actor for One Battle After Another, while Best Supporting Actress remains split three ways among Amy Madigan, Wunmi Mosaku, and Teyana Taylor.

Coogler, 39, is the seventh Black filmmaker nominated for Best Director. His wife Zinzi Coogler, a producer on Sinners, would become the first Black female producer to win Best Picture if the film takes the top prize. Anderson, widely described as the greatest working filmmaker never to have won an Oscar, has been nominated three times previously.

Betting markets give One Battle After Another roughly 80 percent implied probability. Most major outlets have followed that line, though Variety’s Clayton Davis and NPR’s Stephen Thompson have predicted a Sinners upset — drawing comparisons to the late-breaking momentum that carried Everything Everywhere All at Once in 2023.

Voting closed on March 5. The results are already sealed.

The Angle

The statistical paradox is the interesting part — not because of what it predicts, but because of what it reveals about how the industry processes its own preferences. Two perfect precursor records, built over decades, pointing at opposite outcomes. The machinery the Academy uses to rehearse its decisions before making them has, for the first time, produced a contradiction it cannot resolve by precedent. What happens next is decided by roughly 10,000 voters ranking films on a preferential ballot, which rewards breadth of goodwill over depth of conviction — a system that favours the film fewer people object to over the film more people love. Anderson’s film is the safer second choice. Coogler’s is the one that provokes standing ovations and discomfort in roughly equal measure. The outcome will say less about which film is better than about which instinct the Academy defaults to when its own track record offers no cover: the instinct to reward consensus, or the instinct to make history it can point to later.