Argo's victorious weekend throws Oscar race open

Argo has blown the Oscar race wide open: on 26 January it won Best Film at the Producers Guild Awards and then picked up the best cast performance at the Screen Actors Guild Awards the following day.

In scooping the PGA award, Argo beat most of the competition it faces at the Oscars. The SAG award provides further impetus for Argo after its shock win at the Golden Globes.

The Directors Guild Award is announced on 2 February and will be the final indicator for Best Film and Best Director before Oscar night. The major impediment to Oscar glory for Argo is Ben Affleck not being nominated for Best Director.

The SAGs delivered some of their own shocks while also reinforcing expectations: for the latter, Daniel Day-Lewis won Best Actor for Lincoln, while Anne Hathaway won Best Supporting Actress for Les Mis.

But that’s as far as the form book went: Tommy Lee Jones won Best Supporting Actor for Lincoln, while Jennifer Lawrence (complete with high-profile wardrobe-non-malfunction) defeated Jessica Chastain to win Best Actress for Silver Linings Playbook.

So, other than Daniel Day-Lewis and the Hath, the Oscars are almost unpredictable.

In the US, this unpredictability coupled with differing release strategies means all the heavyweight contenders are finding or have already found their audiences. Lincoln is by far the most successful to date and has been on release in the US for three months. By contrast, Silver Linings has been out for just one week less than Lincoln but was only released wide two weeks ago.

US box office performance since Golden Globe noms (13 December)

• Argo $14.8m ($117.6m total to date)
• Django Unchained $146.2m
• Les Mis $137.5m
• Life Of Pi $39.2m ($103.4m)
• Lincoln $66.3m ($167m)
• Silver Linings Playbook $54m ($68.9m)
• Zero Dark Thirty $69.8m

In the UK, the picture is much different: Argo never really caught fire (less than £6m taken so far), Django is only in its second week (£7m and rising), Les Mis has been number one since it opened (£24m and rising), Life Of Pi proved really popular over Christmas (£25.9m so far and dropping off very slowly) and Silver Linings’ run was pretty much over by New Year’s Eve with less than £5m.

This weekend the other two big heavy hitters opened – and their ‘late’ opening seems to have played against them, especially given their lack of major gongs. Lincoln opened on £1.7m, while Zero Dark Thirty drew in just £1m on its opening.

The BAFTAs are announced on 10 February and the Oscars a fortnight later, and there are plenty more films to be released between now and then, all of which will be competing for screen space, including Denzel Washington in Flight, I Give It A Year (the new Four Weddings), Wreck-It Ralph, This Is 40, and Die Hard 5, so Lincoln and Zero Dark Thirty will struggle to gain ground unless they win big at BAFTA and Oscar.