BAFTA Awards: 'Revenant' Wins Don't Seal the Deal for Oscar (Analysis)

Alejandro G. Inarritu, left, and Leonardo DiCaprio Getty

THR's awards analyst notes that the BAFTAs, which are chosen by a group that includes some 500 Academy members, has a pretty shaky track record at predicting the Oscars.

Nearing the end of an awards season in which the three highest-profile guilds awarded their top prizes to different films — the Producers Guild of America went for The Big Short, the Screen Actors Guild went for Spotlight and the Directors Guild of America went for The Revenant — many Oscar-watchers on Sunday turned to the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, or BAFTA, hoping for some sort of a sign about which film might be out front.

Why? Because the BAFTA Awards, the U.K.'s equivalent of the Oscars, were being handed out; some 500 Academy members also vote for the BAFTAs (the whole group's membership is roughly the same size as the Academy's); all three of the aforementioned contenders was nominated for best film; and the final round of Oscar voting, which began on Friday, extends all the way through 5 p.m. PT on Feb. 23, so even if BAFTA's picks do not correlate with the way many Academy members currently plan to vote, they could conceivably sway some Academy members to vote differently.