2025 Oscars predictions, odds, betting tips, where to watch: Anora brings a new look to Best Picture battle

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Where to watch the 2025 Oscars

ITV1, from 10.30pm Sunday

Best bets for the 2025 Oscars

Timothee Chalamet (A Complete Unknown) to win Best Actor
1pt 2-1 bet365, Coral, Ladbrokes

Fernanda Torres (I'm Still Here) to win Best Actress
1pt 12-1 general

Anora to win exactly three Oscars
1pt 11-8 Hills

2025 Oscars predictions and betting tips

Nuclear bomb drama Oppenheimer destroyed the opposition at last year's Oscars with seven wins but the 97th Academy Awards at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood on Sunday night are expected to see the honours distributed much more evenly.

Emilia Perez topped the nominations list with 13, but has fallen from grace in a major way since then, fuelled by controversial comments - including some criticising the Academy - by actress Karla Sofia Gascon and it is favourite to win only two awards, for Best Song and Best Supporting actress, for which Zoe Saldana is 1-16.

The Best Picture favourite is 1-2 shot Anora, which really doesn't fit the bill of the typical heavyweight dramas that usually land the top honour. There are multiple laugh-out-loud moments in the dark comedy about an erotic dancer who marries the son of an oligarch gangster, and his family's attempts to get the marriage annulled.

Anora is 1-2 and should over the line for a refreshing win but the worry for favourite-backers is that Best Picture is the only award that uses ranked votes, and while it may get most first-place picks, it could score lowly with some voters too.

The excellent Conclave, a drama around the behind-the-scenes skulduggery involved in the election of a new pope, could benefit from that system and snatch the top honour, but at 5-2 the value has really gone now when it was available at 8-1 at the time of the nominations.

The Brutalist, an epic biopic of Hungarian architect Laszlo Toth with a running time of three hours 35 minutes, has been odds-on to win, but is out to 7-1 third favourite.

Adrien Brody, who portrays the troubled genius, is favourite to win a second Best Actor award after his 2003 win for The Pianist but faces some stiff opposition. Ralph Fiennes would be a worthy winner for his role as Cardinal Thomas Lawrence in Conclave, but Timothee Chalamat looks a more likely winner for his tremedous portrayal of a young Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown.

Chalamet stars in two of the Best Picture nominees as he also plays the lead in Dune: Part Two, and actors in musical biopics have a strong record in this category. Rami Malek (Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody) and Jamie Foxx (Ray Charles in Ray) both won in similar circumstances.

If there is to be a major upset it could come in the Best Actress category. Demi Moore is a short-priced favourite at 4-9 ahead of Anora star Mikey Madison. Brazilian actress Fernanda Torres gives a fantastic performance in I'm Still Here as Eunice Paiva, seeking answers and justice while keeping her family together following the disappearance of her husband during the military dictatorship in the 1970s.

Torres won the Golden Globe Award for Best Drama Actress at the perfect time for Academy voters to be spurred to watch the previously unheralded movie prior to casting their ballots and she did not go head-to-head with Moore or Madison in that vote, so remains a relative unknown quantity. Moore won at the Screen Actors Guild while Madison took the Bafta and it may be a more open contest than the odds suggest.

Hills and Paddy Power have markets on the number of wins Anora will have, with Power going 4-6 for under 3.5 and evens for four or more Oscars. Hills have prices on the exact number and three may prove the best bet at 11-8, which is just favourite over four at 13-8. 

As well as Best Picture, Anora is favoured to win Best Director and Best Original Screenplay, while it is second favourite in the Best Actress and Best Film Editing categories.

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