The 2025 Academy Awards nominations have been announced, with The Oscars ceremony taking place March 2, 2025, in Hollywood. OntarioBets.com, the home of Ontario online casinos, was curious about which films Canadians are most excited about.
Using Google Trends, we conducted a country-wide 30-day search on Feb. 18, 2025, to find search interest scores for all movie titles nominated for an Oscar. With multiple Canadian-born nominees, we also highlight the talent being honored at this event. “Sugarcane,” a Canadian-based movie, ranked No. 5.
Rank | Title | Search Interest Score |
1 | Wicked | 59 |
2 | Dune: Part II | 54 |
3 | The Brutalist | 33 |
4 | Anora | 29 |
5 | Sugarcane | 25 |
6 | The Substance | 24 |
T7 | Emilia Perez | 23 |
T7 | Conclave | 23 |
9 | A Complete Unknown | 17 |
10 | Incident | 10 |
With the big night less than two weeks away, OntarioBets.com decided to try and predict how Canada’s top cinematic talent will fare on Hollywood’s biggest night based on their current 2025 Oscars odds.
First, here is a list of Canadian nominees:
Wagering on the Oscars is legal in Canada, depending on the operator and jurisdiction. It’s legal in the nation’s largest province via Ontario sportsbook apps.
Three Canadians are up for the Oscar’s top prize at the 97th annual Academy Awards.
First, Vancouver-born producer Samantha Quan is nominated for “Anora” alongside fellow producers Alex Coco and Sean Baker. In addition to producing the film, Baker is the film’s writer, director and editor. He is also Quan’s husband. The story of a New York City stripper who marries the son of a Russian oligarch, “Anora” is nominated in six categories and, as of Feb. 18, is the betting favourite to win Best Picture. And since the Best Picture Oscar is awarded to the film’s producers, according to FanDuel Ontario Sportsbook odds, Samantha Quan has a -240 chance of taking home Oscar gold for Canada.
The other two Canadians nominated for Best Picture are Quebec’s Tanya LaPointe and Denis Villeneuve, who are listed among the producers of “Dune: Part Two,” last year’s blockbuster adaptation of Frank Herbert’s epic sci-fi novel. Villeneuve, of course, is also the director. Despite the movie’s monster success in 2024, the film has only a +8000 shot at winning Best Picture at the 2025 Academy Awards.
Another category with notable Canadian representation is Best Production Design, with three films boasting craftspeople hailing from the Great White North. Unfortunately, none of those films are “Wicked.” The Wizard of Oz-inspired musical currently sits at -280 on Fan Duel to win Best Production Design at the 2025 Oscars. By the odds, the film with the best chance at upsetting Wicked in this category is “The Brutalist” (+470), which features Canada’s Patricia Cuccia as a set decorator.
Meanwhile, the “Dune: Part Two” design duo of Patrice Vermette and Shane Vieau have +3500 odds of winning Best Production Design at DraftKings Ontario Sportsbook, where Academy Awards wagering is also legal. Likewise, Craig Lathrop is also listed at +2200 at FanDuel to win that award as part of the Nosferatu team.
Vampire flick “Nosferatu” scored nominations for Canadians in two other categories. Linda Muir has +1600 odds at FanDuel to take home the Best Costume Design Oscar – again, “Wicked” is the heavy favourite – and Traci Loader, alongside the rest of Nosferatu’s hair and makeup team, have a +1000 chance of upsetting “The Substance” (-370) in the Best Makeup and Hairstyling category.
Representing the technical categories, Stephen James and Rhys Salcombe of “Dune: Part Two” are the likeliest Canadians to win on Oscar night as members of that film’s VFX team. At FanDuel, the film has -750 odds to win Best Visual Effects at the 2025 Oscars. Meanwhile, sound engineer David Giammarco has a +750 shot at winning Best Sound for “A Complete Unknown” alongside other engineers, mixers, and designers. “Dune: Part Two” is favoured in that category as well, with -230 odds at NorthStar Bets Ontario Sportsbook as of Feb. 18.
Finally, Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie are nominated for their film Sugarcane, an investigative documentary exploring the destructive history of Canada’s Indian residential school system. Though born in Minnesota and raised in California, Julian Brave NoiseCat is Canadian-American and a member of the Secwépemc First Nation, whose traditional territory is located in British Columbia.
It’s a long shot to win the Best Documentary Feature category at +650 odds with NorthStar Bets, but don’t count “Sugarcane” out. The movie is widely available on Disney+, while frontrunner “No Other Land” (-250) has failed to secure distribution in the United States because of its subject matter surrounding the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine.
USA Today photo by David Baratz
Author
Jeff Parker is an entertainment writer for OntarioBets.com. A writer for film, television and the internet, Jeff is a life long movie buff, with a Masters Degree in Popular Culture. He lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where he works full time as documentary filmmaker and producer.
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