Beginning next week, we’ll be starting a new series on the site: Contenders. Looking at the historical factors that can make or break a film’s Oscar chances, the Contenders series is intended to try and quantify those metrics into a universal system. As this is the first year, it’s probable that weight factors and variables may change in subsequent years.

CLICK HERE to read in detail how Contenders are factored.

Starting next week, with a drop of a handful of Contenders, we’ll begin posting a new contender each day and updating the list of contenders, segmenting them by Stage of Completion and then alphabetically with a numeric value listed next to each. These will be updated as frequently as possible. Typically, a page won’t be updated until the film has completed one or more stages.

If you have questions, please post them at the above link or, if you have a question about an individual production, you can comment directly to those films. How many initial films will we highlight next week? That’s still to be determined, but it will likely be anywhere from 5 to 10 at each stage of the process.