The ADG Awards were also tonight (we’re pretty much going in order of increasing importance of these guilds). I’ve yet to post my write-up of the category because I was waiting to see what the guild was gonna do and what BAFTA does, just since this year feels pretty open for Production Design.
As a refresher, your Oscar category is: Black Panther, The Favourite, First Man, Mary Poppins Returns and Roma. At ADG, The Favourite, First Man and Roma were all going up against one another in the Period category, while Black Panther and Mary Poppins were going up against each other in Fantasy. And then there was also a Contemporary category that no one much cares about.
Black Panther won ADG’s Fantasy category and The Favourite won for Period. Oh, and Crazy Rich Asians won Contemporary, in case you were remotely surprised by that outcome. Isle of Dogs won Animated as well, for those who care.
Pretty much what this tells me is that Black Panther and The Favourite are the two frontrunners here, which makes the most sense. Poppins doesn’t have enough support to pull off a category like this without precursors, First Man is basically an afterthought in a category like this, and Roma doesn’t need a win like this and needs precursors to get anywhere (which is has yet to get). Black Panther already has a BFCA win and I suspect The Favourite will take BAFTA, putting each with equal precursors leading into the ceremony and a fairly open race. Black Panther wasn’t nominated at BAFTA, which leads me to believe that I’ll have to consider The Favourite (insert title here) to win the Oscar. But this feels like the most open Production Design race in a while. Since that Lincoln year. Or maybe not. I guess it’s basically a 50/50 at this point, seemingly, unless BAFTA decides to give it to Roma, First Man or Poppins, all of which are nominated there. So we’ll see. Still, no real surprises on this one.
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