Welcome to Statue Season! Each week leading up to the 98th Academy Awards ceremony, we’ll be checking in on the closest races, the winningest narratives, and the plain old movie magic that will decide who’s taking home the gold on March 15. This week, we’re breaking down the biggest takeaways from the 2026 BAFTAs and what they could mean for the Oscars.
We’re in the homestretch of Oscar season, and dare I say, things are getting exciting. Sunday’s BAFTAs kicked off a pivotal run of precursor awards, and the Brits graced us with snubs, surprises, and, uh, a far too lifelike Paddington Bear. Now, the questions are: Is One Battle After Another unbeatable? How many times is the Best Supporting Actor favorite going to change? Wait, Timothée Chalamet lost? After we trudged through a relatively slow period of the awards circuit, the numerous upsets on Sunday were very welcome—and they could have significant implications for next month’s Academy Awards. Let’s run through the biggest takeaways from the ceremony and what they might mean for some of awards season’s closest races.
Both supporting acting categories are up for grabs.
Let’s start with the biggest takeaway of the night: The Best Supporting Actress and Actor Oscar races are in a wild state. Sinners’ Wunmi Mosaku and One Battle After Another’s Sean Penn came out on top in the BAFTA equivalent awards, and now the Oscar favorites are anyone’s guess—both categories have resulted in a three-way split among the three major precursors so far (the Critics Choice Awards, Golden Globes, and the BAFTAs). In the Best Supporting Actress race, Weapons’ Amy Madigan won the CCA back in January; then One Battle’s Teyana Taylor became the Oscar favorite by snagging the Golden Globe a week later. It looked like a race between the two of them until Mosaku’s surprise BAFTA win on Sunday. Just a couple of months ago, Mosaku was not even expected to land an Oscar nomination. (Remember when we thought Ariana Grande was a lock to earn a nod for Wicked: For Good? How times have changed!) Now her touching performance as the hoodoo practitioner Annie is making an already competitive Best Supporting Actress field that much tighter.
There’s one caveat, however: Madigan was not nominated for the BAFTA for Best Supporting Actress. In fact, the only major precursor in which Mosaku, Taylor, and Madigan all competed against one another was the CCAs. Still, after the BAFTA win and a strong showing in the early awards circuit, Mosaku’s Oscar odds are surging: FanDuel still has Taylor in the lead but now has Mosaku ahead of Madigan. All three are nominated at the Actor Awards (formerly the SAG Awards), so that result on March 1 will be a key indicator for what direction the Oscar is going.
Over in Best Supporting Actor, things are just as up in the air. If you’re getting whiplash from how many times the lead has changed in this category, you’re not alone: Penn was the early favorite for the statuette until he ceded some critics circle prizes to his costar Benicio del Toro. Then Frankenstein’s Jacob Elordi swooped in for the CCA, and Sentimental Value’s Stellan Skarsgard landed the Golden Globe; Skarsgard has held as the Oscar favorite ever since. But after Penn’s BAFTA victory, the pendulum is swinging back toward Colonel Lockjaw: FanDuel now has him at –115, with a slim lead over Skarsgard. The Actor Awards, which have had a bad streak of ignoring non-English-language films, did not nominate Skarsgard for Best Supporting Actor, so the BAFTAs might serve as our best preview of this Oscar category. But amid Penn’s resurgence, Skarsgard, a beloved actor and first-time Oscar nominee, still has a compelling narrative and a ton of support—before March 15, this might be the single hardest Oscar category to predict.
More on the Oscars
Marty Supreme whiffed—what does that mean for Timothée Chalamet’s Best Actor campaign?
Marty Mauser was set on making history, but I don’t think this is what he had in mind: After a zero-for-11 shutout, Marty Supreme tied the record for the most losses for a single film in BAFTAs history. Crucially, that includes the BAFTA for Best Actor, the equivalent to the Best Actor Oscar, which Chalamet has long been favored to win. Confusing matters further, the winner of the BAFTA was from a movie you probably haven’t even heard of: The trophy went home with Robert Aramayo for I Swear. Yep, young Ned Stark beat out Timmy.
So how did this happen? I Swear—which is based on the real life story of John Davidson, who grew up ostracized because of tics resulting from Tourette’s syndrome and later advocated for awareness of the disorder—is a Scottish film that came out in the U.K. in October but won’t be released in the U.S. until April and thus is not eligible for this year’s Oscars. (However, following the BAFTAs, the film has been linked to some controversy: Davidson was in attendance and shouted a few profanities during the ceremony, including a racial slur while Black actors Delroy Lindo and Michael B. Jordan were presenting onstage. Host Alan Cumming acknowledged to the audience that the outbursts were involuntary and apologized to anyone offended, and Variety reported that Davidson voluntarily left the ceremony midway through.) Unsurprisingly, the BAFTAs can often favor British films—regardless of their impact across the pond. In 2022, for instance, Joanna Scanlan won the Best Actress BAFTA for After Love, which didn’t come out in the U.S. until two years later. Sometimes, the BAFTAs’ penchant for British productions and stars ends up foreshadowing the Oscars—in 2019, many believed that Glenn Close was going to win Best Actress for The Wife, but Olivia Colman’s BAFTA win for The Favourite accurately predicted the Oscar. Other times, it’s clear that the BAFTAs’ tastes simply don’t always align with the Academy’s.
In this case, because Aramayo isn’t nominated for an Oscar, I don’t think that Chalamet’s chances should be affected by this loss. However, Marty Supreme’s goose egg at the BAFTAs did signal that the film probably won’t perform well at the Oscars: Even though it notched nine Oscar nominations, Best Actor is the only category the film is favored to win. The movie’s poor BAFTAs performance comes after a controversial story in Page Six last month reporting that Marty Supreme director Josh Safdie’s “recklessness” led to a sex scene between a 17-year-old actress and an adult actor in which the latter exposed himself to the minor during production on the Safdie brothers’ 2017 film, Good Time. (The report said that Josh was made aware of the actress’s age on the same day but after the scene was shot and that codirector Benny Safdie wasn’t aware until years later, which led to the rift between the brothers.) Some have called the report part of a “smear campaign,” and it may have soured opinions on Marty Supreme. Chalamet remains the Best Actor favorite, but Gold Derby has had Wagner Moura’s odds for his performance in The Secret Agent creeping up for weeks. The Actor Awards, once again egregiously excluding international fare, did not nominate Moura for Best Actor, so we may be in for a surprise on Oscar night if his stock continues to rise (and Chalamet’s does slip).
One Battle After Another continued its Best Picture sweep.
Will it actually happen? Is a Paul Thomas Anderson movie going to win Best Picture? With the BAFTA for Best Film under its belt, it’s looking more likely that One Battle will finally break PTA’s Oscar curse. The BAFTA joins the CCA, the Golden Globe, and a ton of critics circle prizes in the film’s collection of Best Picture–equivalent awards. One Battle’s strong BAFTAs showing extended to the technical categories as well, as it added trophies for Best Cinematography and Best Editing to its haul. Sinners is still a formidable contender for the top Oscar, and I don’t want to count it out yet. But we’re now entering territory where it would be historically anomalous (although not unheard of!) for Ryan Coogler’s film to pull off the upset. The Producers Guild Awards are on Saturday, and the recipient of the top prize there has very often gone on to win the Best Picture Oscar. If One Battle emerges victorious once again, PTA’s Oscar coronation could be all but guaranteed.
Best International Feature will come down to the wire.
We expected the Best International Feature race, with its particularly impressive group of nominees, to be close—but man, this thing is really close. On Sunday, Norway’s Sentimental Value won the BAFTA for Best Film Not in the English Language (there’s gotta be a less clunky name for that award) from a five-nominee slate identical to the one Oscar voters are choosing from. That win came despite Skarsgard’s loss, and it followed Brazil’s equivalent victories for The Secret Agent at the Golden Globes and the CCAs. Both FanDuel and Gold Derby currently give Sentimental Value a slight edge, but fellow Brazilian production I’m Still Here also surged late last year to overtake France’s Emilia Pérez for the statuette. Some more minor upcoming precursor awards, like the César Awards and the Satellite Awards, could indicate whether momentum is shifting one way or another over the coming weeks, but neither of those is a particularly strong Oscar predictor. This one might just come down to vibes: If Skarsgard’s campaign deflates while Moura’s revs up, I would expect the Best International Feature race to go the same way for their respective movies.
Stock Watch
To paraphrase one of cinema’s great stockbrokers: Nobody knows whether an Oscar stock is going to go up, down, sideways, or in circles. In this section, we’ll evaluate who’s on the up-and-up and whose momentum is sputtering out as the competition across categories heats up.
Stock up: Netflix’s The Perfect Neighbor has long been the Best Documentary Feature favorite, but Mr. Nobody Against Putin’s BAFTA win on Sunday could signal that it’s a real contender for the statuette. Zootopia 2 (called Zootropolis 2 in the U.K.—who knew!) nabbed the Best Animated Feature BAFTA for a much-needed boost, although it was not competing against Oscar favorite KPop Demon Hunters. Frankenstein continued to separate itself in the craft categories by snagging trophies for Best Costume Design, Best Make-Up and Hair, and Best Production Design.
Stock down: Train Dreams seemed like it had potential to usurp Best Cinematography favorite Sinners, until One Battle leapfrogged the former with the BAFTA win. Sinners has also maintained the lead in the inaugural Best Casting race, but it lost the BAFTA to I Swear—is Coogler’s film not as far ahead in that category as we thought? Jonny Greenwood’s hopes for his first Oscar win might have been dashed as Ludwig Göransson took home yet another Best Original Score equivalent award on Sunday—the One Battle composer might not yet be freed of PTA’s Oscar curse.
