Emma Stone - 'Poor Things'
As we head toward the Oscar awards on March 10, the Best Actress category has had several intriguing moves. For a while, Lily Gladstone (blue line in chart) was a steady favorite for Killers of the Flower Moon, a Martin Scorsese film with Oscar-bait written all over it (nine-minute standing ovation at Cannes).
Now that’s what I call a fun market.
But in late November, money started to come for Emma Stone (Poor Things, black line), lifting her to parity with Gladstone at around 40c. In late January that volume increased and seemed justified when Stone scooped the BAFTA Award (the British version of the Oscars). Stone became a strong 75c favorite in the Oscar market.
Then last weekend, Gladstone won the Screen Actors Gold Best Actress award, and the two swapped places again.
The BAFTA and SAG results were new market information, and it’s appropriate that they moved the market. But what was going on with Emma Stone’s high-volume move before the BAFTAs?
Any Hollywood cynic will tell you that the worst way to predict Oscars winners is by actually watching and comparing the movies in contention. The contenders for each award are nominated by the members of the various crafts – i.e. actors nominate actors, actresses nominate actresses, each behind-the-camera specialization votes for its own nominees, etc. Then all members of the Academy (about ten thousand individuals) vote on the winners of all categories. It’s not a democracy. Being an active participant in the movie industry does not make you an academy member. Tribal factions abound.
Back in 2006, Brokeback Mountain was a heavy, heavy favorite for Best Picture. If you set out to design a contender for Hollywood approval, you could not have done better than this movie. Based on an award-winning novella by a sharp observer of American culture (Annie Proulx), directed by Ang Lee (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) and starring Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal. Oh – and it was a sympathetic, realistic and observant take on homosexuality in America – one of the first movies to tackle this topic. It was the overwhelming critical and popular choice.
What happened? Brokeback Mountain lost to Crash – a movie ostensibly about racism but actually about a diverse group of people all with the same anger management issues. A lot of people were surprised, perhaps none more so than Jack Nicholson, when he read the result live on stage:
Is it weird or is it fishy?
There’s no shortage of Oscar results which attracted surprise. To the absolute fury of many American fans, The English Patient beat Fargo in 1996, and the perceived injustice was repeated two years later with Shakespeare in Love beating Saving Private Ryan. But that’s not fishy, that’s just Hollywood.
What is significant – and similar – about 2006 and 2024 is the substantial price movement prior to the result. It’s difficult to get data from 2006, but as I was one of those who thought that Brokeback Mountain was a nailed-on winner, I have a nightmarishly clear memory of how Crash shortened in the weeks before the result. Here’s what I could find:
On February 27, 2006, a Vegas tipsheet recorded Brokeback Mountain as a -400 favorite (American odds). It drifted all the way to -125 final odds, in response to the money coming for Crash.
Source: Sportsoddshistory
What does a substantial price movement tell us?
The range of possibilities is:
The result is rigged.
2. The result has been leaked.
3. New information.
4. One large player has an opinion that differs from the popular view.
This year, we can rule out both 1 and 2*.
New Information
We already noted that the BAFTA and SAG awards were new information, but there’s also the factor that Killers of the Flower Moon was seen a lot earlier than Poor Things. Flower Moon was released in cinemas in October and on VOD in December. Poor Things only had its world premiere in Venice in September, a limited US release in December and is not yet available outside of cinemas. It may have taken time for Emma Stone’s performance to be evaluated against the prevailing favorite for the Oscar.
One Big PlayerBefore the SAG Award, Kalshi’s volume on the Best Actress market was $71k, almost all concentrated in the period since Emma Stone’s rise began. So, yes, it’s possible that one investor saw value in Emma Stone’s price when she was not favorite and bought significant volume, which precipitated a late re-evaluation and triggered a lunge into the market by momentum-followers.
Calling the outcome
I have not seen Poor Things but let’s accept that the consistently high praise for Emma Stone’s performance is well-placed. In Flower Moon, Lily Gladstone’s performance is appropriately understated, not the type of big, scenery-rattling stuff that won for Jessica Chastain in 2022. But it’s a moving portrayal in a wrenching account of overlooked American history.
We can speculate that Academy members would consider either performance worthy of an Oscar. Which brings us to the externalities:
* Emma Stone is a worldwide star who already has an Oscar for Best Actress (La La Land 2017) and several Screen Actors Guild awards. Lily Gladstone, who is of NiMíiPuu and Siksikaitsitapi heritage, is the first Native American woman ever to be nominated for Best Actress. She was comparatively unknown before being cast in Flower Moon.
* The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has been accused of being too liberal, progressive and politically correct. It has been accused of being biased in favor of whites. The Academy members who are casting their votes while you try to predict what they’re thinking, may be trying to pre-empt what you’re thinking about them. Or not. Is this starting to feel a little bit like Jay Powell telling us what he thinks we need to hear so that we don’t start getting all judgy or make stupid bets?
NB: Stan_DV8 has a position in this market.
NOTES
1. There were, in fact, mutterings about rigging in 2006, easily stimulated by the producer/director of Crash, Paul Haggis’s membership of the Church of Scientology. Scientology has long had a significant proportion of influential Hollywood celebrity members (Wikipedia) and, rightly or wrongly, has been suspected of various conspiracies. But in 2024, there are no apparent similar factors.
2. The Oscar voting process is administered by the audit firm PwC and it’s hard to believe there could be a leak of results, notwithstanding this small crisis in 2017. In any event, according to the Academy Award website, the closing date for voting on the main awards is February 27, so there was no result to be leaked by the time these market moves were complete.
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