The 88th Academy Award – known more commonly as the Oscars – will take place on 29th February 2016 in Hollywood. As well as the glamour, red carpets, mesmerising dresses and jewellery and the legendary after-show parties, the awards are also concerned with honouring the best films of 2015. Here we bring you details of the frontrunners in the Best Picture outright betting as we sift through the available information to give you our predictions and betting tips regarding which film we think will earn the coveted gong. With our live odds comparison you can also be sure that you’ll be getting the best possible betting odds, whichever movie you plump for.
The favourite at the time of writing in the outright winner market for Best Picture is Spotlight, which is directed by Tom McCarthy and stars Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton and Rach McAdams. On the face of it, the film looks to be classic Oscar fodder: it’s based on a true story about how a newspaper uncovered a child molestation scandal in the Catholic Church. And though it is undoubtedly very well acted and hard-hitting, we feel that best betting odds of just 11/10 are far too short to commit at this early stage.
We are much more inclined to back the Alejandro González Iñárritu-directed film about the 1820s frontiersman Hugh Glass, The Revenant. Starring Leonardo DiCaprio in what is claimed by many to be his most powerful performance to date, the story revolves around Glass’s quest for vengeance against his former companions who left him to die in the wilderness after a bear attack. If this seems too gruesome a concept to woo the Academy, you might look elsewhere, but at best odds of 4/1 with Bet365 and others, The Revenant ticks a lot of the right boxes for us.
We certainly won’t be backing Carol to get the nod, a film about a store clerk who falls in love with an older man, who happens to be married. Another to avoid is The Martian, starring Matt Damon, which didn’t illicit the critical response upon its release that would really put it in the frame in the outright betting for Best Picture.
A film that might just have an outside chance of claiming the Best Picture award is Danny Boyle’s imaginative biopic (of sorts) of Apple mogul Steve Jobs. Starring Michael Fassbender as Jobs and Kate Winslet as Joanna Hoffman (one of the key players at Apple at the time), the movie – entitled simply Steve Jobs – is very well made, as you would expect from the highly accomplished Boyle and it has enough about it to garner plenty of Academy votes. Priced at best betting odds of 20/1 with Ladbrokes (when priced as short as 9/1 at other firms), Steve Jobs is our outside betting tip for Best Picture glory.
Of course, there are plenty of other films which stand a fighting chance, with Room – about a five-year-old boy who has been confined to a single room with his mother his whole life – perhaps having enough emotional oomph to pull the requisite heartstrings. Alternatively the financial crash-related The Big Short – starring Christian Bale, Ryan Gosling and Steve Carell – could also sneak into contention. But our prediction is that DiCaprio’s performance in The Revenant will propel the movie to the Academy Award for Best Picture at the 2016 Oscars.