All About Evevs.Sunset Boulevard.From Here to Eternityvs.Roman Holiday.The Sound of Musicvs.Doctor Zhivago.Shakespeare in Lovevs.Saving Private Ryan.

Every year at the Oscars has head-to-head battles, but some years are truly defined by them. In all of Academy Awards history, the record for the most categories in which two films squared up against one another was 10, shared byBecketvs.My Fair Lady,Mad Max: Fury Roadvs.The Revenant, andOppenheimervs.Poor Things.

Until this year.One Battle After AnotherandSinnersare set to duel in a record-setting11 categorieson March 15, making this one of the most epic one-on-one face-offs across all 98 years of the Oscars.

Is Paul Thomas Anderson’s or Ryan Coogler’s film more likely to win these matchups? That’s where I come in.For the 15th year, I’ve calculated the odds that each nominee wins in each category using only data and a statistical model. My method takes in the numbers from earlier award shows, which other categories a film is nominated in, critic scores, betting markets and other miscellaneous quantitative data. The computer assigns more weight to those inputs that have historically been the most correlated with the Oscar result in each category.

As it turns out, there are enough Oscars to go around that neither of these two awards-season heavyweights is likely to go home empty-handed. But there can only be one best picture prize, so that’s where we’ll begin.

There’s no denying thatSinnersalready pulled off one of the most impressive feats in the history of the Oscars, earning a record-smashing 16 nominations. To be fair, the model has no historical data on what it means to appear on the ballot that many times, because no film had ever done it before.

But we do have data on what it means to receive the most nominations in a given year, and it’s more of a mixed bag than one might expect. Excluding years when multiple films tied for the most nominations, a surprising 44 percent of films to lead the nomination counts did not win best picture. The model is much more convinced byOne Battle After Another’s dominating run through nearly every best picture precursor. True, it lost the Actor Award for best cast toSinners, but that’s not nearly enough to dethrone it from first place in the model’s eyes.

In the entire history of the Oscars, 41 individuals have been nominated in at least four separate competitive categories. Of those, there are only two people who have more than six career nominations yet no trophies to show for it: Bradley Cooper (12 nominations) and Paul Thomas Anderson (14 nominations). While this won’t be Cooper’s year just yet, it sure looks like it will be Thomas’. Between hisOne Battle After Anothernominations for this category, best picture, and best adapted screenplay, he’ll get three bites at the apple to finally win his first Oscar.

If you have a coin handy, time to flip it. That’s about as effective a method of filling out your Oscar pool for best actor as any other. The math sees just a 0.9 percent difference between the leader – Michael B. Jordan (Sinners) – and the runner-up – Timothée Chalamet (Marty Supreme). Not to mention, Wagner Moura (The Secret Agent) is also north of 20 percent to win, so perhaps a three-sided coin is in order.

We arrive at the only “easy” pick among the four acting races. I put easy in quotes since nothing is ever 100 percent in probabilities, but this is by far the most likely. Jessie Buckley (Hamnet) won a whole bunch of honors this awards season for her masterful, gut-wrenching performance, including a Golden Globe, Critics Choice, BAFTA, and Actor Award. Last stop: the Oscars.

Source: Drudge Report