La La Land’s impressive haul of awards and accolades so far has had many wondering how impressively it could perform at this year’s Oscars.
The current record for most Academy Award wins is shared by three films – Ben Hur in 1960, Titanic in 1998 and Return of the King in 2004, who all scooped 11 – but the data suggests that La La Land could go one better.
First of all, it’s in the hat for a lot of the awards that the previous record holders all took home. Of the 11 that each bagged, all three claimed the same eight awards and La La Land is currently the favourite for seven of them. The only nomination it’s missing is for Best Visual Effects – unsurprising given its relatively low production budget of $30m – but that isn’t necessarily a deal-breaker.
The other area where it is under-represented in the nominations is for individual acting awards. The two leads – Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone – are nominated for Best Actor and Actress respectively, but none of the supporting cast have been given a nod and Gosling is unlikely to wrest the Best Actor statuette from Casey Affleck, who looks to be a shoo-in after his performance in Manchester By The Sea. However individual awards tend not to matter much for clean sweeps: of the 12 acting awards that the three record holders could have claimed between them, they took just two and were only nominated for two more.
Where La La Land has an unquestionable edge is in its performance at the Golden Globes. None of the three record holders claimed more than four awards at the corresponding Golden Globe ceremony, but La La Land took an incredible seven.
It is not just the number of awards it won that stands it in good stead, but the specific accolades that it is been winning. Of the five Golden Globes which have seen the judges agree most often with those at the Academy Awards over the past 20 years, La La Land scooped four of them.
Some would say that Damien Chazelle’s youthfulness could count against him in the Best Director category, but there’s nothing strange about a man in his thirties winning. He’d actually be the 20th thirty-something to claim the award, although he would set a new record for the youngest ever winner. On the date of the ceremony he would be 221 days younger than Norman Taurog, the current record holder, was when he claimed the 1931 award.
However many Oscars it ends up with, we have to salute the value for money that it has provided. Ben Hur cost just over $15m to make but adjusted for inflation, it would have set the studio back around $125m if it was made today. Return of the King would cost a similar amount in today’s money, while Titanic – which cost $200m at the time – would weigh in at a shade under $300m now, which is 10 times what La La Land cost.
You can find the odds for La la land making history by winning the most Oscars ever, as well as other related Oscar betting odds here.
