Welcome back to the next installment of The Oscar Code’s Case Study series. I hope you all enjoyed my Nickel Boys article from Thursday and learned a lot about that film’s Oscar campaign path. As mentioned before, this is a series that will go over the previous year’s nominees and why it ultimately won or lost the award that year using historical data. The order of the series will be in reverse chronological order of the odds of winning for last year’s Best Picture nominees from Ben Zausmer’s Oscar Betting Odds 2025 article. The next film that will be discussed is The Substance.

The Story During Awards Season: The Substance, a satirical body horror film about a fading celebrity who uses a black market drug that creates a much younger version of herself, was nominated for Best Picture after receiving high critical acclaim after winning at several film festivals starting with Best Screenplay at the Cannes Film Festival. The film was particularly acclaimed for using horror elements and satire for its themes of aging in the media industry as well as for Demi Moore’s comeback performance. Outside of Best Picture, the film was nominated for Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Actress, and Best Makeup and Hairstyling. The film’s sole win at the awards ceremony was for Best Makeup and Hairstyling. Demi Moore was widely expected to win Best Actress, but surprisingly lost to Mikey Madison’s performance in Anora that night.

What Helped Its Nomination: The Substance was incredibly well received by critics, voting groups, and audiences last awards season. In addition to winning Best Screenplay at the Cannes Film Festival, the film also won the People’s Choice Midnight Madness Award at the Toronto International Film Festival. It was also nominated for Best Picture-Musical or Comedy at the Golden Globes, Best Picture at the Critics Choice Awards, and Best Picture at the Producers Guild of America Awards. Lead actress Demi Moore’s performance was acclaimed as a comeback for her and she won Best Actress at the Screen Actors Guild awards, the Critics Choice Awards, and the Golden Globes as a result. The film was also a box office success earning over $77 million worldwide on an $18 million budget and was well received by horror fans. The surprise box office success as well as acclaim from critics and prizes from festivals and voting groups helped The Substance‘s case for a Best Picture nomination despite it being a body horror film, which is a sub-genre that rarely gets nominated by the Academy.

Why It Ended Up Losing Best Picture: Despite the love from critics, voting groups, and audiences, The Substance was only nominated for Best Picture by one of the major guilds. It was only nominated for Best Picture by the Producers Guild of America and did not earn a Best Ensemble nomination at the Screen Actors Guild and a Best Director nomination at the Directors Guild of America. While the Producers Guild nomination helped secure its nomination, none of the Best Picture winners in the past 20 years had less than 2 nominations from the major guilds, which made it a long shot to win the award before Oscar night. This was the distributor MUBI’s first film that was ever nominated for Best Picture and truthfully, winning Best Picture was not the end goal in this campaign. The end goal was to secure a Best Actress win for Demi Moore and it ended up being a very close race. While she won Best Actress at the Globes, Critics Choice Awards, and the Screen Actors Guild, she ended up losing the Oscar to Mikey Madison, who was the lead performance in the eventual Best Picture winner Anora. There were two reasons for that. Firstly, Madison also won the British Academy Film Awards over Moore which started a boost. Secondly, there has been a trend in the 2020s to award the lead performer in the eventual Best Picture winner as the face of the film the Academy loves that year. Previous examples of this trend include Frances McDormand for Nomadland, Michelle Yeoh for Everything Everywhere All at Once, and Cillian Murphy for Oppenheimer. Madison became the fourth case of this trend that night. Despite the shocking loss for Best Actress and the long uphill battle to win Best Picture, I feel this was still a very successful first Best Picture campaign for MUBI and better days are ahead despite the upset loss for Moore.

The Ultimate Takeaway: The Substance was a rare body horror film that was nominated for Best Picture because of its satirical take on the industry, Demi Moore’s comeback performance, and was widely beloved by critics and audiences. I do feel the ultimate end goal for MUBI this awards cycle was to land Best Actress for Moore and while they felt short, this was a great first campaign for them given they had never been nominated for Best Picture prior to this film. Unfortunately I am not confident in MUBI winning Best Picture this year due to a very crowded slate this year with Golden Lion winner Father Mother Sister Brother, Die My Love, The Mastermind, and The History of Sound, which are all considered long shots at the moment to be nominated for Best Picture. However, I am very confident they will eventually win Best Picture in the coming years because of how successful their first Best Picture campaign went despite the long shot chances of winning the award,

Hope you all enjoyed the latest installment of the Case Study series! The next installment will be out on Monday and will cover Wicked. Feel free to provide feedback and ask any questions about this series! I look forward to hearing from all of you.