Oscars’ Most Unfair Trend Can Finally End This Year Thanks to Kieran Culkin

Ever since its establishment almost a century ago, The Academy Award remains the most desired golden trophy among aspiring and already prominent filmmakers, but every new ceremony just keeps making it clear that only a couple of movies will eventually make it to become the big winners.

Naturally, it’s usually the Best Picture nominee or rather winner who takes the most of the awards home, which has been the case of the Oscars ’ last 12 ceremonies, but this year things are actually likely to be different.

The highly anticipated event is still more than a month away, but first bets are already in, with Kieran Culkin as the Best Supporting Actor frontrunner whose potential win will finally break the prestigious awards’ long-standing curse.

Best Supporting Actor Award Went to Best Picture Nominee’s Actor for 12 Consecutive Years

For more than 10 years in a row, the Academy has been making one statement pretty clear: the bigger your movie is, the more chances you have to get that statuette for your acting work in it. This seemed like a new norm since the award for Best Supporting Actor has been given to that actor whose movie also appeared to be a Best Picture nominee or even winner.

The unjust trend was started after Christopher Plummer won his Oscar for a 2011 romcom Beginners which didn’t receive any other Oscar nominations; that was then followed by wins of Christoph Waltz, Jared Leto, J. K. Simmons, Mark Rylance, Mahershala Ali, Sam Rockwell, Mahershala Ali, Brad Pitt, Daniel Kaluuya, Troy Kotsur, Ke Huy Quan and Robert Downey Jr.

All of the movies those winners starred in at least got nominated for Best Picture, with some taking the main prize home.

Kieran Culkin’s Movie Isn’t Best Picture Nominee

The actor currently has the most chances to win in the Best Supporting Actor category for his role in the Jesse Eisenberg-led and directed drama A Real Pain. Despite its universal acclaim from both critics and viewers, the movie got recognition from the Academy only in two categories and is also nominated for Best Original Screenplay, but didn’t make it to the list of the Best Picture contenders.

Since Culkin has already won a Golden Globe and now appears to be the most probable Oscar winner, despite having strong fellow nominees like Guy Pearce, Edward Norton, Yura Borisov and Jeremy Strong, the actor is likely to prove that the Best Supporting Actor award doesn’t go hand in hand with a Best Picture nominee.

The Oscar ceremony is now set to take place on March 2.