ACE Editors Guild Preview and Predictions

The ACE Eddies will announce their nominees tomorrow, a week AFTER Oscar nominations (which has to be a first). Like the WGA nominations, they chose a later deadline, which has made things a wee bit confusing and also means they might have as much influential power as they usually do, and this year will simply indicate what the editors think overall.

We expect the big titles to be there: Top Gun: Maverick (Drama) and Everything Everywhere All at Once (Comedy). Since Oscar nominations are out already, we’ll be looking at whatever titles cross over.

In looking over my charts of the ACE Eddie and Oscar, it looks like the trend of late is that what wins the Eddie doesn’t often win the Oscar for Best Editing. It seemed to happen more in the past than it has of late.

The editing prize is considered a major award and is frequently handed out to the films the Academy likes and wants to award but may not be winning anything else. In the era of the expanded ballot, Best Editing has matched with Best Picture twice: The Hurt Locker and Argo. They, of course, won the Eddie too.

Argo was kind of a unicorn in that once it started winning, it won EVERYTHING. It was somehow a result of the combination of Ben Affleck’s movie star charisma, his “comeback,” and having been left off the Best Director list. Either way, it was like wildfire.

The films that won both the Eddie and Oscar for editing since 2009 that did not win Best Picture:

Bohemian Rhapsody
Dunkirk
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Social Network

So all in all, six times out of the last 13 years there was a crossover. I fully expect that to happen again this year with Top Gun: Maverick, but we’ll have to see how that goes.

Here are our Eddie predictions:

Drama
All Quiet on the Western Front — Sasha Stone, Ryan Adams, Clarence Moye, Marshall Flores
Elvis — Stone, Adams, Moye, Flores
TÁR — Stone, Adams, Moye, Flores
Top Gun: Maverick — Stone, Adams, Moye, Flores
Avatar: The Way of Water — Flores
Thirteen Lives — Adams
The Fablemans — Stone, Moye

Comedy/Musical
Babylon — Stone, Adams, Moye, Flores
The Banshees of Inisherin — Stone, Adams, Moye, Flores
Everything Everywhere All at Once — Stone, Adams, Moye, Flores
Glass Onion — Stone, Moye, Flores
The Menu — Stone, Adams, Flores, Moye
Triangle of Sadness — Adams

I am not sure how many surprises we’ll see but I guess you never know. Aftersun seems like a movie that might get in here but I do not know which film to bump. Either way, we’ll post the nominees tomorrow.