6 surprising ways history could be made at the Oscars this year

Despite the Oscars’ 95-year history, there are still a lot of “firsts” to be celebrated.

Many are watching, for example, to see if Everything Everywhere All at Once star Michelle Yeoh will become the first Southeast Asian woman to win Best Actress, or whether Angela Bassett could become the first person to win an Oscar for playing a character from the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

The Action Network, a sports betting site, tallied over 50 additional ways history could be made across over a dozen categories at Sunday’s awards show.

Here are some of the more unusual potentially record-breaking moments to watch out for at the Academy Awards.

1. If Michelle Yeoh wins Best Actress for Everything Everywhere All At Once, she would hold the record for portraying the most characters in an Oscar-winning performance. There are over 70 multiversal versions of Yeoh’s character Evelyn in the movie, and Yeoh portrays most of them.
2. John Williams, the iconic composer, could become the oldest winner of a competitive Oscar if he wins Best Original Score for his work on The Fabelmans. Williams is 91; the record is currently held by writer-director James Ivory and costume designer Ann Roth, who both won Oscars when they were 89.
3. All Quiet on the Western Front, a German movie about World War I, could become Netflix’s first Best Picture win. Eight Netflix films have been nominated for Best Picture since 2018, but none have won. The Action Network said All Quiet has the second-best odds to win Best Picture, behind Everything Everywhere.
4. In its nine-decade history, the Oscar for Best Cinematography has only been awarded to men. That could change this year, when Mandy Walker could become the first woman to win that category for her work on Elvis. She’s just the third woman to ever be nominated in the category.
5. Afrobeats star Tems would become the first Nigerian to win an Oscar if she wins Best Original Song for co-writing Rihanna’s Lift Me Up from Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.
6. If Andrea Riseborough, a long-shot nominee for Best Actress, wins in that category for To Leslie, she would become the first actress to do so without winning or being nominated at any of the major precursor award shows: the Golden Globes, Critics Choice Awards, BAFTA Awards, and Screen Actors Guild Awards. Those awards are seen as bellwethers for the Oscars, and since they have all existed, every Best Actress winner has at least been nominated in one of the precursors.