Picture the phone call. A first-time Imax director on one end, a two-time Oscar winner on the other, and the question of whether to shoot a vampires-in-the-Mississippi-Delta horror film on 65mm film stock hanging in the air. Ryan Coogler picked up the phone, called Christopher Nolan, and asked if he had lost his mind. Nolan, as Deadline reported, told him it "wasn't crazy" at all.
That conversation looks rather different now that Sinners has an Academy Award for Best Cinematography on Autumn Durald Arkapaw's shelf. It also lands in the middle of an awards cycle that prediction markets are already trying to handicap, and the next Oscars race, the 99th, is the one Nolan himself is in the frame for. His adaptation of The Odyssey is the current front-runner on Polymarket's nominations contract, but only by a sliver.
What the market is actually asking
The contract on the table is narrower than it sounds. Polymarket's 99th Academy Awards nominations market does not ask which film will win Best Picture, nor which will sweep the night. It asks a single mechanical question: when the Academy reads out its nominations next year, which title's name appears the most times across all categories. Acting nods count. Below-the-line craft nods count. A Best Original Song nomination for a track on the soundtrack counts.
That is a different game from the Best Picture odds you might see at a high-street bookmaker, and the distinction matters. Nomination-count markets reward films with broad technical reach: a big-canvas production with score, sound, costume, production design, visual effects, editing, cinematography, and a couple of acting contenders can rack up double-digit nods without ever being the night's eventual winner. If you have read our explainer on how prediction market odds work, the logic here is the same; the resolution criterion just happens to be a tally rather than a single binary outcome.
A two-horse race with a long tail
As of 28 June, two films are doing most of the work. The Odyssey sits at 36%, narrowly out in front. Dune: Messiah is right behind on 30%. Together they account for roughly two-thirds of the implied probability, which is a tidy way of saying the market thinks one of these two big-format spectacles is overwhelmingly likely to lead the nominations tally.
Beyond the top pair, the field flattens fast. Wild Horse Nine is on 7%, up six points on the day, which is the kind of move that suggests either fresh news or a small pocket of conviction money. The Social Reckoning is on 6% and moving the other way, having shed fifteen points in 24 hours. Project Hail Mary and Disclosure Day sit at 6% each. Wuthering Heights and The Bride! round out the field at the bottom of the ladder, in single-digit and sub-one-percent territory respectively. Turnover is modest by the standards of Polymarket's headline political contracts, which is to be expected for an awards market this far from nominations morning. For context on why that matters, our piece on liquidity in prediction markets is worth a read.
Why Nolan's anecdote is more than a press cycle
The Sinners story is a useful reminder of how the format question feeds into the awards question. Shooting on Imax 65mm is not a neutral choice. It changes the look of a film, the budget, the post-production pipeline, and the conversation around it. It also tends to invite the Academy's craft branches to pay attention. Sinners earned Durald Arkapaw the Best Cinematography Oscar this past cycle, a result that ratifies the bet Coogler and Nolan talked through on that phone call.
The Odyssey is Nolan's own Imax-scale production, and that is part of why the market is pricing it where it is. A Nolan film tends to draw nominations across the craft categories almost by default, regardless of how the Best Picture race ultimately shakes out. Dune: Messiah carries the same DNA, a big sci-fi follow-up with Denis Villeneuve's existing track record behind it. Both films are exactly the kind of broad-reach productions a nominations-tally contract is built to reward.
What the market cannot tell you is which film will actually be good. It can only tell you which film traders believe the Academy will spread its love most widely across. Those are very different questions, and a nominations leader has lost Best Picture often enough that the distinction is worth holding in mind.
The honest editorial take
A 36-to-30 split between two unreleased films, both still months away from their festival reception and screener cycle, is a market saying it does not yet know. The shape of the field, with two big-format spectacles ahead and a cluster of mid-single-digit contenders behind, looks more like a sketch than a verdict. Expect the ladder to reshape several times before nominations are read.
iPredicta tracks awards-season contracts across Polymarket and the regulated venues, and the 99th Academy Awards nominations market is one we will keep an eye on as the field firms up and the trade press starts publishing its first reactions to actual footage.
Frequently asked questions
How does Polymarket's nominations-count market actually resolve?
It resolves to the single film with the most Oscar nominations across all categories at the 99th Academy Awards, expected in March 2027. Every nomination tied to the film counts, whether it is a craft category, an acting nod, or Best Original Song. Ties are handled per the contract's stated rules, but the headline question is just: which title's name gets read out most often on nominations morning.
Does leading the nominations tally mean a film will win Best Picture?
Not necessarily. Nominations-count leaders frequently lose Best Picture, because the tally rewards broad technical reach across craft categories rather than the single Best Picture vote. A big-canvas production can pile up double-digit nominations and still walk away without the top prize, which is why this contract and a Best Picture market are pricing two genuinely different questions.
