Oscar Predictions from The Daily Beast's Oracle: Social Network to Black Swan

Will The Social Network really nab Best Picture? Could Jennifer Lawrence win Best Actress? Using data that track mass opinion, The Daily Beast places its early bets on which actors, films, and directors will take home the top awards this season. Plus, view our complete awards coverage.

Will The Social Network really nab Best Picture? Could Jennifer Lawrence win Best Actress? Using data that track mass opinion, The Daily Beast places its early bets on which actors, films, and directors will take home the top awards this season.

With the Oscar nominations now out, The Daily Beast presents its Oscar Oracle, a mathematical index that tracks online buzz, to predict the top contenders in each category. Indeed, some races are starting to seem like foregone conclusions, such as Best Picture ( The Social Network), Best Actor ( Colin Firth for The King’s Speech), and Best Supporting Actor (Christian Bale for The Fighter). But a number of categories are still being shaken up, none more so than Best Actress, where newcomer Jennifer Lawrence ( Winter’s Bone) has overtaken Annette Bening ( The Kids Are All Right) as Natalie Portman’s ( Black Swan) biggest threat. Darren Aronofsky, director of the controversial Black Swan, also surprises by taking the lead in the Best Director race, elbowing past favorites David Fincher ( The Social Network) and Tom Hooper ( The King’s Speech). All a sure sign of more intrigue in the coming weeks. Read more about how the Oscar Oracle works here.

Gallery: The Daily Beast’s Oscar Oracle

How The Oscar Oracle Works:

The Oscar Oracle is an index designed to predict which films and individuals will win awards this season by continuously tracking mass opinion. By crowd-sourcing more than 10 million user-generated comments per month from 60,000 sites, including the most well-known entertainment blogs, fan sites, online communities, and other websites, our technology provider, Wise Window, and its entertainment industry partner, BoxOffice.com, have developed a proven methodology for identifying opinions about films and individuals regarding the Best Picture, Director, Animated, and Documentary Feature, Acting, and Writing Categories. By quantifying these opinions into a trend-based measure of buzz, Oscar Oracle provides continuous insight into entertainment consumer opinion of which film, actor, director, or screenwriter is a hot contender for a coveted nomination or ultimately an Academy Award.

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