Welcome back to the next installment of The Oscar Code’s Case Study series. I hope you all enjoyed my article discussing The Brutalist from Friday and learned about that film’s Oscar campaign path. As mentioned before, this is a series that will go over the previous year’s nominees ands 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 Emilia Perez.

The Story During Awards Season: Emilia Perez, a musical crime film about a Mexican cartel leader who transitions into a woman and seeks to reunite with her family, was nominated for Best Picture after highly receptive reception from several film festivals throughout the year. While it was received positively by critics for its performances, Emilia Perez had a more polarized reception from audiences for its handling of its themes and stereotypes. However, the film’s reception was strongly received at several film festivals including wins at Cannes Film Festival and Toronto International Film Festival. It was the most nominated film at the Oscars with 13 nominations including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress, Best International Feature Film, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Film Editing, Best Sound, Best Cinematography, Best Makeup and Hairstyling, Best Original Score and 2 nominations for Best Original Song. It won Best Supporting Actress and one of its nominees for Best Song won that award. Early on in the race, it was considered a frontrunner for both Best Picture and Best International Feature Film but its chances for both plummeted after controversial tweets from lead actress Karla Sofia Gascon resurfaced and caused significant backlash from the public.

What Helped Its Nomination: While it was not well received by audiences and critical reception was more moderately positive, Emilia Perez was a hit in the festival circuit. Its first win at the Cannes Film Festival for Best Actress for the lead ensemble of Karla Sofia Gascon, Selena Gomez, Adriana Paz, and Zoe Saldana led Netflix to buy the film’s US and UK rights for $8 million. From there, it premiered at the Telluride Film Festival and Toronto International Film Festival. At the latter festival, the film was the runner-up for the People’s Choice Award, which is a historically helpful spot for prospective Best Picture nominees. The film’s strong festival reception ultimately led it to a Best Picture-Musical or Comedy win and a Best International Film win at the Golden Globes, a Best Picture nomination at the Critics Choice Awards and at the Producers Guild of America Awards, a Best Director nomination at the Directors Guild of America Awards, a Best Ensemble nomination at the Screen Actors Guild Awards, and a Best Picture nomination and a Best Film Not in the English Language win at the British Academy Film Awards. It was also named in the top ten Films of 2024 by the American Film Institute. Zoe Saldana’s performance ended up being one of the big victories in the film’s Oscar campaign with Best Supporting Actress wins at the British Academy Film Awards, Critics Choice Awards, the Golden Globes, and the Screen Actors Guild Awards leading her as the unquestioned frontrunner in that category last awards season. These nominations and wins combined made it one of the stronger nominees on paper.

Why It Ended Up Losing Best Picture: I will address Emilia Perez ultimately losing Best Picture through two different lenses. The first one is the more obvious, the film attracted controversy for its themes which led to a more polarized reception from audiences. Once Gascon’s tweets resurfaced, Netflix had distanced itself from Gascon, which led to a more difficult campaign path. With Saldana being the main winner for the film, she ended up becoming the face of the Oscar campaign path without the presence of Gascon hurting her chances. The controversy was a big factor in Emilia Perez‘s defeat in the Oscar race for Best Picture and Best International Film. However, before the controversy with the tweets, I statistically did not have confidence with Emilia Perez pulling off the win for Best Picture. The big reason why was its win at the Golden Globes for Best Picture-Musical or Comedy. As I mentioned in my analysis of The Brutalist, a Globe win for Best Picture does not translate well to the Oscars. Only 2 Globe winners for Best Musical-Comedy in the past 20 years (10%) also won the Oscar for Best Picture. That number is significantly worse than the Best Picture-Drama correlation (30% of the winners in the past 20 years won Best Picture). To overcome the low odds, the film needed to do well at the Guilds. Its losses at the Producers Guild of America, Directors Guild of America, and Best Ensemble at the Screen Actors Guild Awards did not help the film and ended up being another case of a film winning too early and losing out on Best Picture. Also, a Netflix film has never won Best Picture due to voters disagreeing with their stance on releasing films theatrically. The closest nominees to winning were Roma and The Power of the Dog, which both won Best Director and had Guild support despite its Best Picture loss. Emilia Perez ultimately needed a shot in the Guilds, but thanks to its controversy, it ended up losing out.

The Ultimate Takeaway: Netflix took a big gamble when they bought Emilia Perez at Cannes and positioning that film to be their Oscar tentpole. Despite its early victories at the Golden Globes, the film attracted a lot of controversy which ultimately cost it Best Picture because of a lack of vetting behind the scenes on Netflix’s front. Netflix is playing it safer this year with Train Dreams, House of Dynamite, and Frankenstein as their prospective nominees but I am not confident in any of them being the ultimate winner for Best Picture. Unless Netflix changes their stance on releasing films theatrically, I am truly not confident in any of their films winning Best Picture anytime soon.

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