5 Oscars Best Picture Favorites That Somehow Never Won
These frontrunners were the ones to fall victim to wrong bets.
Ever since its establishment almost a century ago, the Academy Award has gone hand in hand with an exciting competitive atmosphere that had everyone cheering for their personal favorite.
Apart from ordinary viewers, the industry’s professionals also got involved, making bets about potential big winners ahead of the ceremony; this soon led to a creation of lists ranking every nominee’s chances to enter the Oscar history, though not everything eventually turned out to be true or even close to be true.
This, apart from Best Actor and Best Actress categories, also concerns contenders for Best Picture, and some of those were considered almost certain winners until they shockingly lost to some other movie.
Brokeback Mountain (2005)
The hit drama starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger probably serves as one of the most disheartening proofs that the Academy can be unpredictably judgemental.
The movie, 20 years later remaining a beloved romance story, back in the day received universal acclaim and had all chances to win Oscar for Best Picture, but ultimately lost to Crash, a criminal thriller that had nothing as charming when compared to Brokeback Mountain.
The latter being deprived of the award by a much less deserving contender is still one of the most audacious decisions the Academy voters have ever made.
La La Land ( 2016)
Damien Chazelle’s hit musical drama had a major success with both critics and viewers, swept all other prestigious awards and after Emma Stone ’s Best Actress win was the most certain Best Picture win.
At some point, this almost turned out to be true when La La Land was first announced the winner and the whole cast and crew came up on stage, though everyone’s delight quickly went down to a big disappointment.
As it was revealed later, the cards were mistakenly switched at the last moment, and the real winner was Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight.
Saving Private Ryan (1998)
Another example of utter injustice at the Oscars ceremony, Steven Spielberg ’s masterpiece Saving Private Ryan is to this day considered robbed of the Best Picture award by a controversial drama Shakespeare in Love that also won Best Actress for Gwyneth Paltrow.
Rumor has it that the 1998 ceremony’s unexpected outcome had a lot to do with Shakespeare in Love’s producer Harvey Weinstein who, before being expelled from Hollywood, was known for relentlessly pushing his projects forward during awards seasons and thus turning every ceremony into a fierce competition.
Roma (2018)
Alfonso Cuarón’s touching semi-biographical drama Roma had an unprecedented success for Mexican cinema, garnering a whopping number of 10 Oscar nominations and becoming a lead in the Best Picture race.
However, the Academy’s own priorities were put into light when The Green Book grabbed the award; Roma was a big winner too though, taking home the statuettes for Best Foreign Language Film, Best Director and Best Cinematography.
Still, the movie is to this day associated with yet another robbery by an undeserving fellow nominee.
The Aviator (2004)
Considered a frontrunner at the 2005 ceremony, The Aviator 20 years later remains one of Martin Scorsese ’s finest works and one of Leonardo DiCaprio ’s best performances in the entire career, with both being more than deserving of the award.
The movie was a solid contender with 11 nominations, including for Best Picture, but ultimately lost the main prize to Clint Eastwood’s Million Dollar Baby.
Still, The Aviator didn’t leave the ceremony without some other major wins and took home the statuettes for Best Supporting Actress, Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design and Best Film Editing.