Producers Guild Preview and Predictions

This awards season, for the first time ever, the Directors Guild and the Producers Guild will announce their nominations on the same day: next Tuesday, January 7 — the same day that Oscar ballots are due. By January 7, a good many Oscar voters will have turned in their ballots already. Ballots are sent to members on January 2, the day after New Year’s.

There are two main differences between the Producers Guild and the Academy. First, although the Producers Guild do use the preferential ballot to determine their winner, just as the Academy does — they are the only two groups that do, the difference is that the PGA has ten nomination slots and ten nominees. The Academy has five nomination slots and a varying number of nominees depending on how many films reach a certain threshold of support. In 2009 and 2010, the Academy had ten nomination slots and ten nominees. But in 2011, they reduced the number of choices per voter to five slots.

The second big difference is that the Producers Guild members are exclusivily producers, whereas the Academy has voters from all the branches of film making. Of course, some producers do cross over as actors, directors, and writers, but in general, the Academy is singular in its combination of members from the various branches across different disciplines.

For the most part, we ordinarily see the same small group of films hit across the different guilds. Usually a film that wins Best Picture will show up pretty much everywhere. Building an industry consensus simply means that a lot of people will tend to like the same movies across the board. The HFPA, or Golden Globes, aren’t part of that consensus, though they do influence the perception that shifts the narrative.

When critics unite behind one movie, they can also influence perception, as they have most definitely done with Greta Gerwig’s Little Women. Though there are many other fine films by women this year, in order to gather enough support for one to prevail, a strong consensus had to built around just one of those movies and that movie has now been chosen. Therefore, voters now know that if they want a movie directed by a woman to get in, it will have to be this one. Any votes for any other movies by women will split up the vote and none will get in, as happened last year.

Thus, I would expect that Little Women is a strong contender for both the Producers Guild and Oscar Best Picture because it takes a village. The only sticking point might be the movie itself — which is, despite what critics say, confusing to many of the people who see it. That should not hurt it when it comes to a preferential ballot nomination, however, as that rewards passion — and by the looks of it this film is inspiring passion, not to mention that it has a very big cast that includes Meryl Streep.

Before we look at the contenders, let’s take a quick look at how PGA has matched Oscar in the era of the preferential ballot:

2018
Green Book+
Black Panther
BlacKkKlansman
Bohemian Rhapsody
Crazy Rich Asians
The Favourite
A Quiet Place
Roma
A Star Is Born
Vice

2017
The Shape of Water+
The Big Sick
Call Me by Your Name
Dunkirk
Get Out
I, Tonya
Lady Bird
Molly’s Game
The Post
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
Wonder Woman

*Phantom Thread

2016
La La Land
Arrival
Deadpool
Fences
Hacksaw Ridge
Hell or High Water
Hidden Figures
Lion
Manchester by the Sea
Moonlight+

2015
The Big Short
Bridge of Spies
Brooklyn
Ex Machina
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Martian
The Revenant
Sicario
Spotlight+
Straight Outta Compton

*Room

2014
Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)+
American Sniper
Boyhood
Foxcatcher
Gone Girl
The Grand Budapest Hotel
The Imitation Game
Nightcrawler
The Theory of Everything
Whiplash

*Selma

2013
12 Years a Slave+  (TIE)
Gravity  (TIE)
American Hustle
Blue Jasmine
Captain Phillips
Dallas Buyers Club
Her
Nebraska
Saving Mr. Banks
The Wolf of Wall Street

2012
Argo+
Beasts of the Southern Wild
Django Unchained
Les Misérables
Life of Pi
Lincoln
Moonrise Kingdom
Silver Linings Playbook
Skyfall
Zero Dark Thirty

*Amour

2011
The Artist+
Bridesmaids
The Descendants
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
The Help
Hugo
The Ides of March
Midnight in Paris
Moneyball
War Horse

*The Tree of Life

2010
The King’s Speech+
127 Hours
Black Swan
The Fighter
Inception
The Kids Are All Right
The Social Network
The Town
Toy Story 3
True Grit

*Winter’s Bone

2009
The Hurt Locker+
Avatar
District 9
An Education
Inglourious Basterds
Invictus
Precious
Star Trek
Up
Up in the Air

*The Blind Side, A Serious Man

It isn’t always the case that all of the Producers Guild nominees show up in Best Picture at the Oscars. We are now in our 10th year of the preferential ballot. While most of them do cross over — on average, 7 out of 8 or 9 — a few random titles have popped up here and there, and I would bet this has to do with the actors branch more than anything. Can the actors elevate a movie that the producers wouldn’t?

That said, I full expect the lineup — with ten nomination slots and ten nominees — to look something like this:

The surest bets:

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood — Quentin Tarantino among producers
The Irishman — Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro among producers
Parasite — Bong Joon Ho among producers
1917 — Sam Mendes among producers
Joker — Todd Phillips among producers
Jojo Rabbit — Taika Waititi among producers
Marriage Story — Noah Baumbach among producers
Bombshell — Charlize Theron, Charles Randolph, Jay Roach among producers
Ford v Ferrari — James Mangold among producers
Little Women — Amy Pascal among producers

But one of these could bump one of those:

Hustlers — Lorene Scafaria, Jennifer Lopez, Will Ferrell, Adam McKay among producers
Knives Out — Rian Johnson among producers
Dolemite Is My Name — Eddie Murphy among producers
The Two Popes
Avengers: Endgame
Uncut Gems — Scott Rudin among producers

All ten obviously aren’t making it into the Oscars. Maybe nine will. Maybe eight will. Maybe seven will. Movies that don’t cross over do so because they don’t make it into the five slots available on individual Oscar ballots as best of the year. I would not count out Little Women on that one — it will most definitely be the default Girl Power vote, without a doubt, and will easily get in, even without Globe or SAG nods.

Our strongest films, though, are still those that hover around Best Director, and right now there appear to be six or seven on that score:

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
The Irishman
Parasite
1917
Joker
Jojo Rabbit
Marriage Story

Can Greta Gerwig edge out one of these directors? I mean, honestly, with the praise from critics and the desire to get more women into the top tier categories, it’s possible. As I’ve been saying all along, the bar is set incredibly high because even when you start adding titles to this list, then you get to Ford v Ferrari, Bombshell (which has a ton of SAG noms), and The Two Popes (which is gathering steam). The internet gives a slightly skewed perception of how people really see Little Women, so it is a hard one to parse. The only thing that gets a movie in is passion, and if people have passion to celebrate Greta Gerwig’s success (regardless of the film she made), she, like many directors before her, will find a spot in the lineup.