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Edgar Wright Predicted 'Baby Driver' Oscar Noms In 2014, Won Awards Bet With Kumail Nanjiani

Baby Drive Oscar Nominations
By Ethan Anderton

The nominations for the 90th Academy Awards were announced earlier this week, and while Edgar Wright's music-driven heist film Baby Driver didn't end up with any nods in the major categories, the film did end up with a few technical awards, including Best Editing, Best Sound Editing and Best Sound Design. That's certainly a great honor, and it's exactly what Edgar Wright predicted would happen in one of his earliest drafts of the script.

And that's not all of the awards-related good luck Edgar Wright has found this week. The filmmaker happened to make a bet a little while back with The Big Sick co-writer and star Kumail Nanjiani about the romantic comedy getting nominated for Best Original Screenplay. Since the film indeed ended up with a nomination in that category, Wright won the bet. So what does Nanjiani have to do? Find out below.

First up, here's Edgar Wright chiming in with evidence of predicting the Baby Driver Oscar nominations:

The important part of Edagr Wright's note at the beginning of the second draft of Baby Driver says, "This is a movie about someone who cannot function without music, so this screenplay is just the road map to a film which should, at the very least, be nominated for one of the sound categories at the 2016 Oscars. I don't mind which." And here we are with Baby Driver getting a nomination in both sound categories, which is pretty damn awesome.

That's not the only time Edgar Wright made such a prediction either, as the filmmaker explained:

It should be noted that this isn't Edgar Wright being cocky about the film, but moreso illustrating how important sound was going to be in the movie and how much meticulous attention was going to be paid to that element of the film because of how important the idea of hearing was in the movie. And the hard work has clearly paid off.

Baby Driver Oscar Nominations

Kumail Nanjiani Loses a Bet to Edgar Wright

As we said in the opening, Edgar Wright also found luck this week by winning a bet he made with comedian turned screenwriter Kumail Nanjiani. The autobiographical romantic comedy landed a nomination for Best Original Screenplay, and Wright again showed off his premonition skills by making another Oscar nomination prediction:

And also I told @kumailn that he and @emilyvgordon would get a best screenplay nomination and that if I was right, he had to eat a bowl of brussel sprouts.

— edgarwright (@edgarwright) January 23, 2018

Kumail Nanjiani corroborated this bet, and as a man of his word, said he would follow through:

Unfortunately, Kumail was reportedly too busy yesterday to follow through on this promise:

As of now, there hasn't been a video uploaded of Nanjiani eating a bowl of brussel sprouts, but I imagine he was also busy yesterday being on cloud nine after receiving his first Oscar nomination for a movie that was purely a labor of love. And since Baby Driver was also one of those special kind of projects for Edgar Wright, we couldn't be happier for these two filmmakers to be enjoying their success in such a delightful manner.

We'll see if they come away with wins in their respective categories when the Oscars air on March 4, 2018.

UPDATE: Kumail Nanjiani has followed through on this bet and Edgar Wright documented it:

Baby Driver is now available on Blu-ray and DVD, and you can buy The Big Sick right now too.

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