The Betfair Contrarian / 03 March 2010 Free Bet View Market

"The Hurt Locker hasn't made anywhere near as much money at the box office as its rivals, grossing just over $19.3 million globally, an amount that would make it the lowest grossing Best Picture winner of all time."

There's an intriguing sub-plot to this years Oscars, as the films that received the most nominations, The Hurt Locker and Avatar, were directed by divorced couple Kathryn Bigelow and James Cameron. The most important of the categories in which they collide is for Best Picture and while the Avatar creator has magnanimously/condescendingly (delete depending on your level of cynicism) said that he'd love to see his ex-wife take the Best Director gong, he's not quite so generous when it comes to the main prize.

Bigelow's The Hurt Locker is the [1.87] favourite in that category but the Contrarian thinks that the war movie will miss out, and is therefore ready to lay for the first time in three months. Here's why...

The numbers aren't great

Despite being released almost six months before second favourite Avatar [2.38], and nearly two months ahead of the pick of the outsiders, Inglourious Basterds [23.0], The Hurt Locker hasn't made anywhere near as much money at the box office, grossing just over $19.3 million globally, an amount that would make it the lowest grossing Best Picture winner of all time. It made only the 27th highest amount of any movie on its opening weekend last June and its budget was only $11 million. So while it may have swept up at several critics awards, the Academy arguably can't afford to give its biggest prize to such a low-profile film that has barely made a dent on the public consciousness.

It missed out at the Golden Globes

The Hurt Locker was beaten by Avatar for the Best Motion Picture Drama prize at January's Golden Globes and only four times in the last 13 years has a film that has missed out on one of the top Best Picture prizes (Drama, and Musical or Comedy) gone on to win an Oscar.

Avatar's figures are too good to ignore

The Academy sometimes openly try to avoid appearing to have been swayed by the box-office performance of high-profile flicks but every now and then one will pull in an amount that is just too impressive to dismiss. Having recently become the highest-grossing film of all time, blitzing the previous record by over $700 million worldwide, Avatar surely now belongs in that category. Proving the theory, only two others in the top 35 highest grossing films have won Best Picture and those are the ones ranked second and third.

Cameron has won it before

The film that Avatar overtook as the highest-grossing film of all time was Titanic, which was also directed by Cameron and was rewarded for its record-breaking figures with Best Picture, Best Director and nine other awards 12 years ago, a joint-record which has since been equalled by the film that raked in the third-highest amount of money The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King six years back.

Inglourious Basterds can't be written off

When asked to predict the winner, the Contrarian opts for Avatar because of the buzz the movie created not just among the average film buff but casual cinema-goers too. But there's another contender that cant be dismissed. Betting.Betfairs film industry insider claims that Harvey Weinstein has a reputation as a master of awards campaigning and his past record at the Oscars means that Inglourious Basterds [25.0], for which he was an executive producer, is very much in with a chance. Weinstein has been involved with four separate Best Picture winners, producing 1998 winner Shakespeare in Love and being an executive producer of The English Patient, Chicago and the third film in the Lord of the Rings trilogy.