If you’re hoping for Wicked to win Best Picture at next year’s Academy Awards, you might want to sit down.
The smash-hit adaptation of the Broadway musical surprisingly took home the National Board of Review’s Best Film award on Wednesday, which puts Wicked well in line to land a Best Picture nomination next month.
Most of the NBR’s recent winners, sans 2020’s Da 5 Bloods and 2014’s A Most Violent Year, over the last decade have gone on to get nominated in the Oscars’ biggest category.
However, only one film since 2008 has actually won Best Picture after winning the NBR’s Best Film honor: 2018’s Green Book.
That puts Wicked at a historical disadvantage, as the NBR’s Best Film award is a rather curious note of bad luck for any Best Picture contender.
The honor only lined up with the Academy in Best Picture during the 2000s on two occasions: 2007’s No Country for Old Men and 2008’s Slumdog Millionaire.
If you’re looking for an idea of how the New York City-based NBR operates, know their Best Film category typically rewards distinctly American films with its top prize and isn’t afraid to honor a blockbuster like it did in 2022 with Top Gun: Maverick and in 2015 with Mad Max: Fury Road.
Wicked is a classic crowd-pleaser, but it’s also a work of American intellectual property and adapted from a gigantic Broadway show. Best Picture hasn’t gone to a work of IP since 2003’s The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King and hasn’t gone to a Broadway adaptation since 2002’s Chicago. The broadening international impact in the Academy’s voting body doesn’t necessarily lend itself to a film like Wicked winning Best Picture, either, as international voters typically prefer more auteur-driven, arthouse-friendly fare like 2019’s Parasite, 2020’s Nomadland, 2022’s Everything Everywhere All at Once and 2023’s Oppenheimer.
However, 2021’s CODA proved how crowd-pleasing films with a musical slant can succeed in Best Picture as of late. However, that’s a film firmly grounded in reality and surged late in the Best Picture process.
These historical stats slip up all the time, so don’t assume this as Wicked‘s kiss of death. However, the NBR’s inability to predict where Best Picture is going over the years does make you wonder if Wicked has a ceiling.
Wicked is most certainly going to be a popular film at this year’s Oscars, but don’t necessarily count on it as the clear frontrunner. This one has much more to defy than you might expect, and the “NBR Best Film curse” is now one of them. It’ll be one of the contenders, but really don’t call it a lock right now.
