Women producers nominated in the Oscar race have seen their numbers steadily increase since the beginning, but not many have won. The first woman to be honored by the Academy as a producer was Julia Phillips, who won for The Sting in 1973. It wouldn’t be until 1989 that another woman won, Lili Fini Zanuck, for Driving Miss Daisy, 16 years later. Since then, only six other women have won an Oscar for producing a Best Picture winner. Dede Gardner won in 2012 for co-producing 12 Years a Slave. If The Big Short wins this year, she would be the first two-time winner in Oscar history.
1989 – Lili Fini Zanuck for DRIVING MISS DAISY
1994 – Wendy Finerman for FORREST GUMP
1998 — Donna Gigliotti for SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE
2003 – Fran Walsh for THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING
2005 — Cathy Schulman for CRASH
2009 — Kathryn Bigelow for THE HURT LOCKER
2013 – Dede Gardner for 12 YEARS A SLAVE
This is Gardner’s astonishing third nomination in a row as a producer: in addition to 12 Years a Slave, Gardner co-produced Ava DuVernay’s Selma last year. Gardner is not a producer who chases awards but instead is committed to bringing daring works with a strong social conscience to the screen. With all of the hubbub this year about Alejandro G. Iñárritu and his string of recent successes, there’s not a lot of talk about Gardner. We offer her a crisp salute here at AwardsDaily.
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Brooklyn is my number one movie of the year. I loved it! Ronan deserves every award in the world. JR, you were so right.
Give me a break. This is very, very interesting. I love stats like this. The Awards Circuit also had a podcast where they examined how many people of various minority groups were up for Oscars. ex: 10 Black women nominated for Best Actress
Then again, George does have his Oscar from Happy Feet already.
this article right here tells me that sasha is being paid by brad pitt, dede and Jeremy. shame on you
Wonderful highlight on Brooklyn’s success, there. That’s great 🙂
No, unfortunately not. She has produced the highest grossing films in history though. That is a great mantle to have. She is also an Academy governor.
How many men have won twice? Or rather which ones? Back then I’d say it was a lot more common when there weren’t as many players in the game but these days I’d say it’s far more difficult to win more than one best picture Oscar. The only women I can think of off the top of my head who produced at least 2 movies that should have won best picture are Kathleen Kennedy (E.T. and Color Purple), Kathryn Bigelow (Hurt Locker, Zero Dark Thirty), Fran Walsh (LOTR 1 & 3). Megan Ellison is the only woman, or person, who produced 2 of the, in my opinion, absolutely best movies in one year (The Master and Zero Dark Thirty).
Edit: Good lord…I forgot Dede produced Tree of Life. She should definitely have 2 Oscars by now.
I didn’t even realize they were married until a few months ago. What a team!
And again….
Nothing but mad respect for Dede Gardner and the astonishing films she received her four nominations for (The Tree of Life, 12 Years a Slave, Selma, The Big Short), but if we really want to go down that road and bring gender into this, I think it is only fair to point out that all four of those films were about men and she shared producing duties with mostly men, too.
Of course her accomplishments are still damn impressive, but if we want to embrace female producers, I think the Finola Dwyer-Amanda Posey duo deserve a mention, too : Brooklyn is their second BP nomination for a film that is unapologetically and without a shadow of a doubt, about a woman. An Education was first. Both received additional nominations for acting and writing. Considering they clearly don’t have the clout, money and star power (Pitt) Plan B can provide Gardner and her colleagues, I think what Dwyer and Posey achieved in recent years, deserves at least equal praise and admiration, too. But at least a mention. My two cents.
P.S. Brooklyn cost 10M to produce and is on its way to 40M in the US even though its widest release wasn’t even 1000 theatres (962), it’s biggest weekend take wasn’t even 4M and it has been out for four months. Long story short, it is a VERY profitable sleeper on top of being a highly acclaimed (87 MC) Best Picture nominee. Yet nobody talks about how this film is actually making money, but everybody thinks that studio films with their big stars, wide (!) releases and pricy marketing campaigns are all that just because they can get to the green zone. Don’t get me wrong, I love those films, too, and I also love that because of their success, probably more films like those will come, still, if we REALLY want to talk about press certain films and nominees get while others don’t, first we should look at Brooklyn and the fierce women behind it.
Too bad that female editor’s husband won’t come away with a statuette for his monumental, practically unrepeatable effort. 🙁
Wow…..no woman has ever won twice, another interesting stat. I was working myself up this year thinking Christine Vachon was finally going to get an Oscar nomination. Didn’t realize it was this bad!
Might not be Dede, but another female producer (maybe 2) will be added to that winners list this year no matter what, be it Dede for TBS, Mary Parent for The Revenant, or Nicole Rocklin/Blye Pagon Faust for Spotlight. 5 of the 8 nominees have one or more female producers this year.
Next time Dede, next time. This time we have the first Mexican producer to win twice back to back. Enough history… + Morricone winning and Leo winning and another great female editor winning. Next time Dede.
Nice!