2015 Oscar Predictions: Best Picture – Gone Girl Finds Her Place, the Theory is Everything

Two films make big jumps this month, The Theory of Everything (which breaks into the top 10 for the first time) and Gone Girl. Although The Imitation Game won the People’s Choice at the Toronto Film Festival last month it was the Stephen Hawking biopic The Theory of Everything that ended up stealing a bit of its thunder with rave reviews and deafening Oscar talk for the film and its two leads, Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones.

Gone Girl benefits from the tremendous marketing that led up to the New York Film Festival, the stellar reviews, its huge box office and by taking the country’s conversation by storm. It lands at #6, within spitting distance of the #5 spot.

Only two films took a hit this month; Selma and Foxcatcher. Selma‘s fall is a bit odd as we’re now starting to see some productions stills and the first scenes were recently shown at the Urbanworld Film Festival. From the chart you can see that Jason is still the lone holdout in giving any votes for Selma as he believes that everyone is vastly overrating the film’s strength. Also, the first test screening apparently took place this week, with modest reviews. We’ll have to see how that plays out but looking at the current standings it appears that it won’t lose strength.

Foxcatcher seems to be suffering a bit from feelings of ‘is it too dark for the Academy?’ Next month’s results look like the film is going to take another hit.

Inherent Vice, which completely fell out of the top 10 last month, bounces back with a slew of great reviews from the New York Film Festival but with many of them thinking it will be too out there for the Academy, will it fall again next month? Checking out the real-time results of Gold Rush Gang predictions, it appears so.

Currently, the Gold Rush Gang’s view of the top 8 contenders is looking more and more solid by the day. Something will have to surprise to break through (American Sniper and Whiplash are the most likely) and/or something would have to fail hard to see it change. Both Unbroken and Selma are the main unproven commodities at this point.  Unbroken seems the most volatile by the majority of GRG members but look out for a bit of a comeback soon. 

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Erik Anderson

Erik Anderson is the founder/owner and Editor-in-Chief of AwardsWatch and has always loved all things Oscar, having watched the Academy Awards since he was in single digits; making lists, rankings and predictions throughout the show. This led him down the path to obsessing about awards. Much later, he found himself in film school and the film forums of GoldDerby, and then migrated over to the former Oscarwatch (now AwardsDaily), before breaking off to create AwardsWatch in 2013.

He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Critics Choice Association (CCA), San Francisco Bay Area Film Critics Circle (SFBAFCC) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.

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