Oscar odds update: Austin Butler and Brendan Fraser neck-and-neck for Best Actor after they split BAFTA and SAG
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Austin Butler (“Elvis”) surprised us by winning the BAFTA Award for Best Actor. As a result, most of the Expert journalists we surveyed thought Butler would win the SAG Award too, but we were surprised again, this time by Brendan Fraser (“The Whale”), who had been the front-runner for much of the awards season. So what does that mean for the Oscars? Right now the margin in our odds is razor-thin, and history doesn’t give us much more guidance.
Butler leads the Oscar race with 7/2 odds. Fraser follows with 71/20 odds. That’s so close it’s practically a tie. As of this writing 12 Experts predict Butler over nine predicting Fraser. Gold Derby’s Editors also favor Butler over Fraser eight to five. Our Top 24 Users favor Fraser with 14 of them betting on him over 10 for Butler. But our All-Star Top 24 lean the opposite way, with 14 going for Butler and nine backing Fraser.
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So what can we learn from the history of splits at the SAG and BAFTA Awards? Not too much, actually. The two groups usually agree, but when they don’t there’s no decisive pattern as to who wins the Oscar. Of the two groups’ last six disagreements, three times the Oscar went to the SAG champ (Sean Penn for “Milk,” Jeff Bridges for “Crazy Heart,” Matthew McConaughey for “Dallas Buyers Club”), twice the Oscar went to the BAFTA champ (Casey Affleck for “Manchester by the Sea,” Anthony Hopkins for “The Father”), and once the Oscar went to neither (SAG picked Johnny Depp for “Pirates of the Caribbean,” BAFTA picked Bill Murray for “Lost in Translation,” Oscar went to Sean Penn for “Mystic River”).
Perhaps it’s meaningful that the two most recent disagreements swung toward the BAFTA winner. That could be a good sign for Butler. He also has the benefit of being in a Best Picture contender, while Fraser’s film underperformed in the nominations relative to expectations. Of the above examples, all the winners save Bridges starred in Best Picture nominees. In fact, over the last 15 years, every Best Actor Oscar winner has come from a Best Picture nominee except Bridges. Still, SAG shows that it’s anything but an open-and-shut case for Butler. This is going to go down to the wire.
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