Easy Money Glitch: How to Win Big on Oscar Bets 2025! (Source: Trust Me, Bro)

Let’s be real, gambling your money away on sports is dumb. The whole point of football is to not know who’s going to win. But what if you had a true expert in a field, one who claims to know more than the almighty bookmakers, one who has watched the Oscars since 2012 and is EarlyGame's resident movie/finance bro? Don’t look any further – here are my predictions for the 2025 Academy Awards.

The numbers in parentheses are the odds in decimal format. A 2 means a $1 bet would return $2 if you win. We don’t do fractional odds in this household.

Best Picture

Let’s start with the big one. For Best Picture, you have to consider the preferential ballot system. Voters don’t name just one best movie; they rank their top 10, and then the number 1 spot that reaches 51 percent of the votes wins. If no number 1 mention reaches 51 percent, the number 2 spot becomes number 1, and so on. You see, the movie everyone is okay with always wins, as movies that only land in the number 2 spot can be called Best Picture.

So, Anora (1.53) or The Brutalist (7.5)? Oscar voters are put off by the incredibly long runtime of The Brutalist at three and a half hours, but the positive portrayal of sex workers in Anora, along with the Intimate Coordinator scandal, diminishes Anora's chances. Because I think most people are okay with placing it in the top 1-3, and Sean Baker has given great speeches for the indie film community, and Anora is, in fact, a really great film, the winner is Anora.

And God forbid Gen Z gets their personal Crash moment when Emilia Perez (81) wins.

Director

Usually, the rule is that Director and Picture go hand in hand, and the race between Sean Baker (1.58) and Brady Corbet (2.5) is close, but I think this will be an exception. Yes, Sean Baker managed to make a well-put-together film, but The Brutalist is an achievement for the ages. Printed on 70mm, 3 1/2 hours long with no dragging moments, on a tight budget of under 10 million? This is an incredible directorial achievement. The winner is Brady Corbet.

Leading Actor

Adrien Brody (1.6) for The Brutalist or Timothée Chalamet (2.85) for A Complete Unknown? Usually, men win their Oscars later because Hollywood knows they can have a career over 40 – but that's a whole other thing. Ironically, Adrien Brody is the exception for his still youngest leading actor win ever in 2003. That, combined with the fact that Academy voters don't care about the "he's already won before" argument, makes the choice easier. Chalamet's "I want to be one of the greatest" speech at the SAG Awards might have put off some voters, as it could have come across as desperate, similar to how Bradley Cooper might be perceived. A well-deserved win for an incredible performance, I think. The winner is Adrien Brody.

Leading Actress

Demi Moore (1,42) for The Substance or Mikey Madison (3) for Anora? A tough one. Demi Moore has been working for more than 4 decades with a career-defining performance in a movie where she goes through hell to not be replaced by someone younger. The script to this Oscar win could not have been better. But my gut says the winner is Mikey Madison. Remember when people thought Roma would win Best Picture, and then Parasite finally won as a foreign language film a year later? Same thing here.

Moore’s nomination for a performance in a horror film is a rare gem, especially after snubs like Mia Goth in Pearl and Lupita Nyong’o in Us, but voters aren't ready for a win just yet. Plus, that "that’s not how it works" aspect – Sylvester Stallone winning for his legendary self-written part of Rocky in Creed after a decades-long career? Nope, that’s not how it works here. They went with Mark Rylance, who just showed up in the movie business like 10 seconds ago. The winner is Mikey Madison.

Supporting Actor

If you bet on anything other than Kieran Culkin (1.06), you're insane. A $100 bet on him gets you $106. For example, a $100 bet on Edward Norton (17), the second favorite, gets you $1,700. I think Culkin really delivered the performance of the year by playing the charismatic yet depressive Benji so incredibly well. Sure, Guy Pearce (30) was good, and Yura Borisov (24) hopefully can also build a career on this, but Culkin has won everything there is up to the Oscars. I loved A Real Pain, and I especially loved Culkin's performance. So the winner is Kieran Culkin.

Supporting Actress

Exactly the same as supporting actor. Zoe Saldana (1.09) is the one good thing in Emilia Perez. Meanwhile, nobody else stands a chance. Not Nepo Baby Isabella Rossellini (24) for her 30 seconds in Conclave, not Ariana Grande (11) in Wicked, and never ever Felicity Joney for The Brutalist (30), since Guy Pearce and Adrien Brody outshine her, actually making her really good performance less noticeable. Because she also won every award up until now, the winner is Zoe Saldana.

Original Screenplay

September 5 (43) can be lucky being listed here. The screenplay of The Brutalist (21) deserves more love but didn't win anything. So, it comes down to a three-horse race. As I said, I love A Real Pain (6.5), and it did win the BAFTA for Original Screenplay, but I don’t think Eisenberg will win since the missing Best Picture nomination diminishes its chances here too much.

Here comes my hot take: I don’t like the Substance (5) screenplay. Why does Demi Moore go through hell just for someone younger to replace her? Nobody in the movie is aware that Margaret Qualley comes out of Moore’s back – they just move on. Meanwhile, Sean Baker, with the Anora (1.4) script, managed to write relatable, three-dimensional, lovable Russian gangsters like Igor and the biggest douchebag of 2024, Ivan. So, the winner is Anora.

Adapted Screenplay

Nickel Boys (11) is a powerful film that I can highly recommend and deserves the second spot given by the bookmakers. However, Conclave (1,1) is just a perfect thriller with well-written characters. Therefore, the winner is Conclave.

Best Song

Welcome to the worst Oscar category in the history of the Academy Awards. In 2012, this category had only 2 nominations – yes, you read that right, 2! The music branch is the smallest in the Academy, and it shows. Diane Warren has been nominated 16 times without a win for movies you wouldn't believe even exist. How about Tell It Like a Woman, a movie that made $12,765 at the box office (no, not made by a streaming service)? Or this year's Tyler Perry movie The Journey with the song The Six Triple Eight? Pardon my French, but A TYLER PERRY MOVIE? What the...!?

Just put your money on El Mal (1.36) from Emilia Perez. Luckily, we don't have to hear any of these songs live this year. I mean, is El Mal a garbage song? Yes! Is it better than La Vaginoplastia? Also yes! Just end me, please. The winner is nobody; they all deserve to lose.

Documentary Short

This one is so irrelevant that Louis CK roasted the nominees in 2016, pointing out that all the other nominees are millionaires and they put the Oscar in their tiny, shabby apartments. I’m not kidding, this is a true fact: Since the Academy knows no one watches Documentary Short and/or Live Action Short, the rules state that these are the only categories where voters must have seen the films. They’re that desperate. In the end, the Documentary Short always wins, usually something that sounds important and suspiciously often focuses on women. The winners from 2019 to 2022 are Period. End of Sentence., Learning to Skateboard in a Warzone (If You're a Girl), Colette, and The Queen of Basketball.

So, the winner this year is obviously The Only Girl in the Orchestra (3.7). I'm Ready Warren (2) is actually the bookmakers favorite, but people don’t like to humanize death row inmates, and the winner is also not Incident (5). Incident is a great moving short about a Black man killed by the police, where the body cam footage is edited into a documentary. But unfortunately, you wouldn’t guess that from the title. What a shame. The winner is The Only Girl in the Orchestra.

High Risk, High Reward

If you place a bet on all of my predictions, you’ll have a bet slip with odds of 164,38. So, bet $10 on it, and if everything goes as planned, you’ll win $1,643. However, if even one prediction doesn’t win, you’ll get $0. You might as well leave out certain predictions and play it safe but win less.

There you go, I could go on, but there’s only so much space. If you actually read all of this, even remotely found it interesting, and didn’t get paid for it, slide into my DMs – because we legally have to get married now. Hey, I don’t make the rules.

What are your predictions? Do you insist on a prenup? Tell me in the comments!