Here's who's really going to win best picture at the Oscars this year

• Best-picture nominees need to fulfill certain criteria to turn their nomination into an Oscar win.
• This includes earning other Oscar nominations in key categories, and winning at major precursors.
• We go through this year's nominees to see how they've performed this awards season and who's on top.

When it comes to winning best picture at the Academy Awards, there's something of a formula.

Throughout awards season, a movie needs to score "points" at certain precursor awards in order to gain the necessary momentum to win the ultimate prize. Whoever gets the most "points" usually wins - although not all the time.

Ahead of this Sunday's 93rd Academy Awards, Insider went through the best-picture nominations and identified the other Oscar nominations that each movie ideally needs in order to win best picture.

From there, we worked out which of this year's eight nominees is ahead in the race to best picture.

Editing, writing, acting, and directing are the most important branches to impress

While the more nominations the better, a movie can miss out on things like costume design, cinematography, and production design, and still be quite likely to take best picture at the Oscars. These are below the line categories, and plenty of past best-picture winners, such as "The Departed" and "Spotlight," missed out on almost all below the line nominations and still won the top prize.

Where a movie really needs to gain support, however, is in the acting, editing, writing, and directing branches. Oscars history tells us so.

Historically, the closest correlation has been between the winner of best director and best picture - 66 of the 92 best-picture winners have also won best director. However, there has been more of a split between picture and director since the preferential ballot voting method (where members rank the films from best to worst, rather than simply choosing their favorite) was brought in in 2009.

Still, most of those best-picture winners at least earned nominations, if not wins, for best director. "Argo," in 2013, was the last movie to win best picture without a directing nomination, and only four others in Oscars history have achieved that ("Wings" in 1929, "Grand Hotel" in 1932, "Driving Miss Daisy" in 1990, and "Green Book" in 2019).

That could spell trouble for half of the best-picture nominees this year. "Judas and the Black Messiah," "Sound of Metal," "The Father," and "The Trial of the Chicago 7" all missed out on best director nods.

Meanwhile, only one movie in the last 40 years has won best picture at the Oscars with no editing nomination - that was "Birdman" in 2016, which bucked one of the most reliable Oscar trends. This year, "Judas and the Black Messiah," "Mank," and "Minari," were all snubbed for best editing. Not looking good for them.

Only seven movies out of 92 have managed to win best picture without also landing a writing nomination. The most recent of those was "Titanic" in 1998. Trouble again for "Sound of Metal," the only one of this year's eight best picture nominees to miss out on a writing nomination.

The acting categories are also important for a movie to earn support in - 12 movies out of 92 have won best picture at the Oscars with no acting nominations. But this won't matter this year since all of the best-picture nominees have at least one acting nomination each, the the first time this has happened since 2007.

Every other year has seen at least one best-picture nominee receive zero acting nominations, and those movies rarely win best picture. The last film to do was "Slumdog Millionaire" in 2009.

This year, only two best-picture contenders also earned nominations for acting, directing, writing, and editing: "Nomadland" and "Promising Young Woman." Good starts for both of those.

The guilds are also important

There are specific awards given out by the guilds for each of these all-important branches: the SAG awards (actors guild), PGA awards (producers guild) DGA awards (directors guild), WGA awards (writing awards), and ACE Eddies (editors guild).

A movie is considered a major Oscar contender if it manages to gain support at each of these awards groups, too.

Five of the last 10 best-picture winners were nominated at all five of these guilds. The other five landed four out of five, with WGA the most common miss.

That's good news for "Nomadland," which scored four nominations (missing WGA), but great news for "Promising Young Woman" and "The Trial of the Chicago 7," both of which landed nominations at all five guilds, the only movies this year to do so.

Position yourself as a best picture winner by... winning best picture

The Oscars are the final stop in a long awards season - the final day of soccer games in the season, if you will. But you need to have scored vital victories in previous big events to truly position yourself as a contender. And there are five best-picture opportunities to win leading up to the Oscars: the Critics' Choice awards, the Golden Globes, the Screen Actors Guild awards, the BAFTAs, and the Producers Guild Awards.

There is a best picture category (or an equivalent - the SAG's best ensemble cast is their version of best picture) at each awards ceremony, and you pretty much need to win at least one to have any hope of winning at the Oscars.

Here are the last 10 Oscar best-picture winners and where else they each won the top prize that year:

• "Parasite" (2020) - SAG
• "Green Book" (2019) - Globes and PGA
• "The Shape of Water" (2018) - PGA and Critics' Choice
• "Moonlight" (2017) - Globes
• "Spotlight" (2016) - SAG and Critics' Choice
• "Birdman" (2015) - Globes, SAG, and PGA
• "12 Years a Slave" (2014) - Globes, BAFTA, PGA, and Critics' Choice
• "Argo" (2013) - Globes, BAFTA, SAG, PGA, and Critics' Choice
• "The Artist" (2012) - Globes, BAFTA, PGA, and Critics' Choice
• "The King's Speech" (2011) - BAFTA, SAG, and PGA

As you'll notice in the list above, winning films in recent years have been dominating less at these precursor awards as prizes are becoming a bit more spread out. And some of these have been surprise winners, like "Moonlight" beating "La La Land" (which had won best-picture awards at the Globes, PGA, BAFTA, and Critics' Choice Awards that year) and "Parasite" beating "1917" (which had won at the Globes, BAFTA, and PGA).

Still, a best-picture nominee has historically needed to win at least one of these precursor awards.

In the last 20 years, only two best-picture winners have failed to win at least one of the top prizes at one of these five precursors, too. They were "Million Dollar Baby" in 2005 and "The Departed" in 2007.

Here are this year's best-picture winners at each of the four pre-Oscars awards:

• Critics' Choice - "Nomadland"
• Golden Globes - "Borat Subsequent MovieFilm" (best motion picture musical or comedy) and "Nomadland" (best motion picture drama)
• BAFTAs - "Nomadland"
• SAG - "The Trial of the Chicago 7"
• PGA - "Nomadland"

"Borat 2" didn't earn a nomination for best picture, so it's just "Nomadland" and "The Trial of the Chicago 7" of the best-picture nominees who won at least one of these awards, with "Nomadland" winning four out of five.

This is a major boost for "Nomadland," which dominated these precursors, while "Promising Young Woman" is left with a lot of ground to make up.

You need to win other Oscars the night-of, too

No movie in Academy Awards history has ever just win best picture and no other award.

A movie needs to win at least one other Oscar to be a reasonable contender, usually more. Only two movies ever have won best picture with only one other win. That was "The Greatest Show on Earth" in 1953 and "Spotlight" in 2016. Both movies also won a writing award.

Out of the current best-picture nominees, here's the Oscars each movie is favored to win, according to awards-experts publication Gold Derby.

• "Judas and the Black Messiah" - supporting actor (Daniel Kaluuya)
• "Mank" - production design
• "Minari" - supporting actress (Yuh-Jung Youn)
• "Nomadland" - director (Chloé Zhao), adapted screenplay, cinematography
• "Promising Young Woman" - actress (Carey Mulligan), original screenplay
• "Sound of Metal" - editing, sound
• "The Father" - none
• "The Trial of the Chicago 7" - none

Bad news for both "The Father" and "The Trial of the Chicago 7," who could both go home empty handed despite earning six nominations each.

The two Oscars "Promising Young Woman" is predicted to win are not hugely safe bets, either. Viola Davis will be a fierce competitor for best actress (for "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom"), while Aaron Sorkin's script for "The Trial of the Chicago 7" could easily win over "Promising Young Woman," which was written and directed by Emerald Fennell.

"The Father" could nab best adapted screenplay over "Nomadland," too, as it did at BAFTA. However, all of the other predictions do look like safe bets. That's good news for "Judas and the Black Messiah," "Minari," "Sound of Metal," and "Nomadland," who are each predicted to win at least one important Oscar.

The writing awards could yet again have a big say in the race. "The Trial of Chicago 7" needs to win best original screenplay to have any hope at all of winning best picture. If it doesn't win that, it's got no chance. "Promising Young Woman" will have to win that award and hope best actress goes their way; then, it's in with a shout.

If "Nomadland" wins best director, which is basically a shoe-in at this point, and manages to hold on to best adapted screenplay, it will be tough to beat.

So, who's ahead?

The answer is pretty obvious: "Nomadland."

The movie won four of the five major best-picture precursor awards, scored nominations at four of the five guild awards, earned Oscar nominations in each of the key branches, and is predicted to win two very important Oscars.

All of the other nominees have major shortcomings in the race to best picture, but if an upset were to occur, look to either "Promising Young Woman" or "The Trial of the Chicago 7." The former earned nominations in all of the important races, the latter is the only other movie this year to win the top prize at a precursor ceremony, and they both nailed the guilds. However, no precursor best picture win for Fennell's movie and no predicted Oscar wins for Sorkin's means both are on shaky ground.

Even if "Promising Young Woman" wins both actress and original screenplay, it's still got to conquer the notoriously difficult preferential ballot - where the most universally liked movie wins. "Promising Young Woman" will be loved by some, but loathed by others. "The Trial of the Chicago 7" will fare well in this method, however, as it's a liked movie that will probably place third or fourth on a lot of people's ballots.

The issue is, "Nomadland" is loved by a lot of people and not really hated by anyone. Even if voters haven't resonated with "Nomadland," it is a very well-respected movie thanks to the expert craft on display. That will see it ranked high on the preferential ballot.

So, long story short, "Promising Young Woman" and "The Trial of the Chicago 7" will battle it out to upset "Nomadland," but Chloé Zhao's movie looks unbeatable at this point.