This week is a big week in the awards season. This is a week where critics groups and independent groups reveal their picks for their top films of the year. The Gotham Independent Film Awards and the New York Film Critics Circle Awards revealed their winners last night and this afternoon respectively. For the first time since 2009, both groups selected the same film as their winner for Best Picture. That winner happens to be what many consider the current frontrunner of the race, Paul Thomas Anderson’s epic political action comedy One Battle After Another. What do these wins mean for its Oscar chances down the line? Well, it is a complicated one.

Before I start, welcome back to the Oscar Code! I hope you all enjoyed your Thanksgiving holiday. I enjoyed my break after the festival awards and my case studies, but have returned for the awards handed out this week. As mentioned, this is a huge week for Oscar predictors and as a result, these awards can lead to some interesting predictions. I look forward to continuing to share this data with all of you to help guide you to what ultimately could win Best Picture. Without further ado, let’s get this deep dive started with One Battle After Another‘s wins at Gotham and NYFCC.

I will start with the Gotham Independent Film Awards. Normally, I do a 20 year sample for the awards I showcase. However, the first Best Feature winner of this voting group was in 2004 so I will showcase every year given it is one extra year from the sample I show. Despite Gotham’s reputation for showcasing independent contenders and predicting future nominees, both its Best Picture win correlation and nomination correlation are very low.

Gotham Independent Film Award Best Feature Winner	Oscar Best Picture Win	Oscar Best Picture Nomination
Sideways	No	Yes
Capote	No	Yes
Half Nelson	No	No
Into the Wild	No	No
Frozen River	No	No
The Hurt Locker	Yes	Yes
Winter’s Bone	No	Yes
Beginners/Tree of Life (TIE)	No/No	No/Yes
Moonrise Kingdom	No	No
Inside Llewyn Davis	No	No
Birdman	Yes	Yes
Spotlight	Yes	Yes
Moonlight	Yes	Yes
Call Me By Your Name	No	Yes
The Rider	No	No
Marriage Story	No	Yes
Nomadland	Yes	Yes
The Lost Daughter	No	No
Everything Everywhere All at Once	Yes	Yes
Past Lives	No	Yes
A Different Man	No	No
Total Best Picture Wins (out of 22 movies given 2011)	6
Likelihood Film Wins Best Picture After Winning Award	27.3%
Total Best Picture Nominations (out of 22 movies given 2011)	13
Likelihood Film Gets Best Picture Nomination After Winning Award	59.1%

As you can see from the winners list of the Gotham Independent Film Awards since 2004, only 13 of the 22 previous Best Feature winners, or 59.1%, have gone on to be nominated for Best Picture. Only 6 of those 13 (The Hurt Locker, Birdman, Spotlight, Moonlight, Nomadland, and Everything Everywhere All at Once) have gone all the way and won Best Picture, which means only 27.3% of Gotham Independent Film Award Best Feature winners have won Best Picture and only 46.2% of the Gotham Best Feature winners nominated for Best Picture ended up winning. The Gotham’s 59.1% Best Picture nomination correlation is the lowest out of all the awards bodies I will cover this week, but I am not worried about One Battle After Another not getting nominated. The fact only 27.3% of the Best Feature winners from this awards group ended up also winning Best Picture is a very low rate and a concerning one. With the exception of Moonlight, the other winners won at least 1 Guild Award which sealed the deal for those films’s fates outside the Gotham Best Feature Award. I will now go over the NYFCC Best Film win, which is much bleaker from a Best Picture win standpoint.

NYFCC Best Film Winner	Oscar Best Picture Win	Oscar Best Picture Nomination
Brokeback Mountain	No	Yes
United 93	No	No
No Country for Old Men	Yes	Yes
Milk	No	Yes
The Hurt Locker	Yes	Yes
The Social Network	No	Yes
The Artist	Yes	Yes
Zero Dark Thirty	No	Yes
American Hustle	No	Yes
Boyhood	No	Yes
Carol	No	No
La La Land	No	Yes
Lady Bird	No	Yes
Roma	No	Yes
The Irishman	No	Yes
First Cow	No	No
Drive My Car	No	Yes
Tar	No	Yes
Killers of the Flower Moon	No	Yes
The Brutalist	No	Yes
Total Best Picture Wins in 20 years	3
Likelihood Film Wins Best Picture After Winning Award	15%
Total Best Picture Nominations in 20 years	17
Likelihood Film Gets Best Picture Nomination After Winning Award	85%

As you can see in this 20 year sample, 17 of the NYFCC Best Film winners (85%) were nominated for Best Picture. However, only 3 of the 20 winners (15%) ended up winning Best Picture, which means only 17.6% of the NYFCC Best Film winners that were nominated for Best Picture ultimately won the award. Truly, this is one of the bleaker correlation rates for a Best Picture win rate out of all the awards I will cover this week. Not to mention, the last NYFCC Best Film winner to win Best Picture was The Artist in 2011, which was 14 years ago. Maybe this year will break the trend, but this win raised serious red flags for me and made me concerned that One Battle After Another could fall into the same early frontrunner status that hurt films such as The Social Network, La La Land, The Fablemans, and The Brutalist. Ironically, 3 of the 4 listed also won this award.

I also decided to do a deep dive on the films that won both Best Feature at the Gotham Independent Film Awards and Best Film at the New York Film Critics Circle Awards. One Battle After Another was the third film to accomplish this feat. The other two were 2004’s Sideways and 2009’s The Hurt Locker. Sideways did not win Best Picture, but The Hurt Locker did. The Hurt Locker also dominated that awards season with Best Film wins at BAFTA, AFI Awards, Critics Choice Awards, Producers Guild of America, and Directors Guild of America that awards season. Although that was 16 years ago, The Hurt Locker had an excellent awards campaign from the get go which did enough to make a difference outside these two early awards. One Battle After Another very well could too, and is expected by many to, but the fact it is one of two big awards contenders for Warner Brothers this cycle could ultimately hurt it in the long run.

Saying all of that, does One Battle After Another winning at Gotham and NYFCC bode well for its Best Picture chances? Truthfully, I do not think so given the historical data provided. Both Best Picture correlation rates for both awards bodies over the past 20 years are super low. In the case of the NYFCC win, the fact it has not had a Best Picture win since 2011 is especially concerning. Maybe the trend will change considering how beloved One Battle After Another is, but considering the data, I am very wary and cautious ultimately on this film to win Best Picture and fear it could fall into the same trap that has hurt other early frontrunners over the years. Regardless, I am happy for the film’s wins as I enjoyed it and am happy for Paul Thomas Anderson who I do think is long overdue. I hope for the best despite the data provided!

Thank you all for reading this and please feel free to comment your thoughts! I look forward to interacting with all of you this awards season and sharing with all of you how The Oscar Code can help determine what will win Best Picture long before the awards begin.