Oscars 2019 Category Breakdown: Best Production Design

Here’s how this works: every day leading up to the Oscars, I break down each of the 24 categories. The goal is to both familiarize everyone with the category itself (how it works, what its history is and how you go about figuring out what’s gonna win) while also making it easier to reference when I write my giant article with picks and everything. A lot of the leg work is already here. But really, the goal is to see if there’s anything to look for leading into Oscar night that could be a shortcut to me picking the category.

What we do is — I give you all the winners of the category throughout history, go over all the recent trends if there are any, discuss the precursors and whether or not they matter, and then we talk about this year’s category and how we got to it, and then just look at where we are and rank the nominees in terms of their likelihood of winning (at the current moment in time. Of course, things can and will change going into the ceremony). It’s all pretty simple. I’ve done this every year. Everyone should know the drill.

Today is Best Production Design.A category that really… sets the tone.

The guild for Production Design is ADG, which gives out awards in three categories, Period, Fantasy and Contemporary. Usually we throw out Contemporary immediately, but this year, Contemporary’s in play and Fantasy gets thrown out immediately.

Here’s ADG vs the Oscars, historically:

• 1996 — The English Patient won both.
• 1997 — Titanic won both.
• 1998 — Shakespeare in Love won the Oscar, What Dreams May Come won ADG.
• 1999 — Sleepy Hollow won both.
• 2000 — Crouching Tiger won the Oscar, Gladiator won ADG.
• 2001 — Moulin Rouge won both.
• 2002 — Chicago won the Oscar, The Two Towers won ADG.
• 2003 — Return of the King won both.
• 2004 — The Aviator won the Oscar, A Series of Unfortunate Events won ADG.
• 2005 — Memoirs of a Geisha won both.

After 2005, they split the categories into the three we know them as today, Period, Fantasy, Contemporary.

• 2006 — Pan’s Labyrinth won both.
• 2007 — Sweeney Todd won the Oscar. There Will Be Blood won ADG Period.
• 2008 — Benjamin Button won both.
• 2009 — Avatar won both.
• 2010 — Alice in Wonderland won the Oscar, The King’s Speech won ADG Period and Inception won ADG Fantasy.
• 2011 — Hugo won both.
• 2012 — Lincoln won the Oscar. Anna Karenina won ADG Period, Life of Pi won ADG Fantasy.
• 2013 — The Great Gatsby won both.
• 2014 — The Grand Budapest Hotel won both.
• 2015 — Mad Max: Fury Road won both.
• 2016 — La La Land won both.
• 2017 — The Shape of Water won both.
• 2018 — Black Panther won both.

So they’re 16/23, just under 70%. Pretty solid. And they’ve only missed twice in the past decade, one of which was that crazy Lincoln year and the other was Alice in Wonderland beating multiple Best Picture contenders. So pretty good overall.

Of the seven times ADG missed the winner:

• Somehow BAFTA didn’t have Shakespeare in Love in 1998
• BAFTA also had Gladiator
• BAFTA had Road to Perdition
• BAFTA did have The Aviator
• BAFTA had Atonement
• BAFTA had Inception
• BAFTA had Les Mis.

So they only picked up one of the misses, meaning they’re either gonna be in agreement with the guild or not overly helpful. They’re 6/10 straight up the past decade

BFCA, meanwhile, has only handed out a Production Design award since 2009, and are 8/10 overall. Though the two they missed are the same two as the guild, 2010 and 2012. But, at least that means we usually have a consensus

Best Production Design

1917

The Irishman

Jojo Rabbit

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

Parasite

The only moderate surprise for me is that they left Joker off here. It got nominated everywhere else, yet this is the one place it didn’t make it, despite hitting all the precursors. The only thing I can figure about that is that it took place in the 80s, and they prefer their Production Design nominees to be at least 40-50 years old, or be something really cool and sneaky like with Parasite. Granted, they went all Best Picture nominees, so Joker being left off isn’t that surprising, considering what made it on, it’s just the idea that it seemed to be a lock and then suddenly got left off.

Anyway, precursors this year:

• ADG Period: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
• ADG Contemporary: Parasite
• BFCA: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

None of the ADG Fantasy nominees made it onto the Oscar list, so that one’s irrelevant. And BAFTA is announcing as this goes up, so if you don’t see the BAFTA winner on here yet, it’s because they haven’t announced that category yet and I’m too lazy to go back and change things. Just do the math in your head and we’ll figure it out next weekend.  Don’t worry, I’m about to take into account what will likely happen there.

Rankings:

5. Jojo Rabbit — I had to make something fifth. I’m not crazy about it, but, absent a BAFTA win (which would immediately skyrocket this to third place, if not potentially second), I’m not sure this would get the votes to go anywhere. Theoretically on pure design, it should probably be fourth, but you’ll see my reasoning why this is fifth in a second.

4. The Irishman — This decade, there’s only like five total categories that went wildly opposite the precursors, and only three of them have come in the era of me really taking this stuff seriously on this website. One of them is Production Design 2012. Anna Karenina, Les Mis and Life of Pi split all the precursors and then Lincoln won out of nowhere. Granted, not that much of a stretch in the grand scheme of things, but it did condition me to think about the Best Picture nominee with a lot of nominations that the Academy might want to ‘give something’ to. Granted, Lincoln took place at the White House in 1863. BUT, I feel like I’d rather have this fourth and not straight up fifth in case that happens. This winning BAFTA would shock everyone, and honestly I can’t see it winning at all. But, the scars of the past have led me to making this fourth choice. I can’t see either this or Jojo winning, but this is always a category I put extra thought into because of that one time. So that’s why this is fourth.

3. 1917 — You almost have to make it third. Theoretically this could win BAFTA, in which case it might even become the second choice in the category. But it’s a war movie, and those typically don’t win Production Design, and there are a lot of reasons to talk yourself out of it as a winner. But given that nothing else to this point has won a precursor, you kind of have to default to the Best Picture frontrunner in third place. If you’re a voter and just have a ballot in front of you and five titles, you’re gonna think about that one immediately identifiable set piece for each movie. Jojo, what’s there? The space behind the wall? Irishman, I honestly couldn’t tell you what stood out there. Here, you’re gonna think ‘trenches’. The rest hardly matters. Trenches. That should be enough to get it to third place, honestly.

2. Parasite — To this point, it’s the only other film to have won a precursor, splitting the guild with Once Upon a Time. However, contemporary films don’t generally do well here. Aside from La La Land (which was part-fantasy, remember, with the musical numbers), you have to go back to All That Jazz for the last contemporary winner, and even that had elements of fantasy to it with the musical numbers. Heaven Can Wait before that… Heaven is in it. So All the President’s Men is the last straight contemporary movie to win Production Design. It’s a tough climb, but given the secrets within the film and the overall love for it, I can see this pretty easily being a second choice here. It wasn’t nominated for BAFTA, so I can’t even say, “If it wins there, it’s got a real shot at it.” Though it not being there does make it more of a wild card in the end, because you don’t really know if they’re gonna go there. But honestly, given what I expect to happen, and how this category usually goes, I think we’re okay feeling pretty confident in the choice here.

1. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood — It won the guild, it won BFCA, it’s probably winning BAFTA right as this goes up… it’s Los Angeles in 1969. La La Land was Los Angeles today and won. They love LA, they all live there at least part of the time, the way they made that movie look and feel like 1969 is stunning. It’s the total package for them. I can’t really see it losing. BAFTA would have to go for 1917 or Jojo for me to really consider this as being in any sort of doubt. Parasite could happen, but… it’s Hollywood in 1969. I they’re gonna give Parasite anything over this, Screenplay makes more sense. I think this is the stone cold favorite going into the ceremony, and the very probable winner. Nothing else makes sense to me.

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