Caꩵn Bradley Cooper of “American Sniper” pull off an Oscar-night upset and snatch the Best Actor Award from the two front-runners, Eddie Redmayne and Michael Keaton?
“While Redmayne and Keaton have been squaring off at one awards show after another,” veteran Oscar prognosticator 𝓰Steve Pond points out, “they have 🔥never been on th🦂e same ballot as Cooper.”
Cooper, who was not nominated at the Golden Globes, the Screen Actors Guild Awards or the British Academy Aw✨ards for “American Sniper,” does have two previous Oscar noms under his beꦏlt (Best Actor for “Silver Linings Playbook” and Best Supporting Actor for “American Hustle”) — while Redmayne (“The Theory of Everything”) and Keaton (“Birdman”) are newcomers to the Oscars game.
The pundits at currently handicap Cooper’s chances at 50-1 (the same as Benedict Cumberbatch’s for “The Imitation Game’’), while the odds on Redmayne are 2-3 and Keaton is at 9-5, with Steve Carell (“Foxcatcher’’) trailin𓃲g the field at 100-1.
But these predictions are based on old paradigms, and “American Sniper’’ is in many ways an unprecedented phenomenon in Academy Awards history — a megablockbuster that caught fire at the box office just after nominations were announced. Earlier this week, its massive US grosses passed ticke🅺t sales for the seven other Best Picture nominees combined.
Gold Derby’s Best Picture odds on “American Sniper” are even worse than for Cooper — 100 to 1 — but that hasn’t stopped the talk about it possibly pulling off one o💫f the biggest upsets in Oscars history.
“A lot of people didn’t think ‘The Departed’ would win Best Pౠicture,” Oscarologist Sasha Stone . “But it was the only one . . . that had the meat and potatoes vote. And th🐟at’s ‘American Sniper’ this year.”
Cooper (who is also up for an Oscar as one of the film’s producers) delivers the best performance of hiಌs career as Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle. Repeated attacks on Kyle’s veracity (the film is based on his memoir) do not seem to have gained much traction, and may in fact be helping Cooper and “American Sniper.”
Another unique aspect of this race is that while Oscars voting is under way (polls close Tuesday), the disturbed veteran accused of killing Kyle is on trial in a widely covered proceeding.