Big day. PGA, DGA, WGA, ACE. Picture, Director, Screenplay(s) and Editing. It’s rare these major four precursors come out as the last ones. Usually it’s all staggered. Which makes this year kinda unique and cool. But, after this, it’s BAFTA a week from today and then we spend the weekend thinking it over because Oscar nominations are the Tuesday after that.
There’s gonna be a lot to go over here, and I suspect most of it won’t be too bad, since we already kinda know what the favorites are in every category. It’s mostly just seeing what little surprises they toss on and what they’re gonna leave for BAFTA to clean up.
We’ll go through them in the order they get announced. Which, as luck would have it, begins with the PGA.
PGA
Best Picture
Being the Ricardos
Belfast
CODA
Don’t Look Up
Dune
King Richard
Licorice Pizza
The Power of the Dog
Tick… Tick… Boom!
West Side Story
Oh, what? You mean the nine top films that have hit everything up until this point got nominated? Color me shocked. And what? Spider-Man didn’t get nominated? Who could have seen that coming? Oh, and the tenth film was the Aaron Sorkin film about Lucille Ball and the golden age of Boomer television as voted on by a group that’s predominantly 50 and older white men? Wow. Amazing.
PGA gonna PGA. That’s the takeaway here. And that it’s pretty obvious what the 9 most likely Best Picture nominees are gonna be. I don’t expect BAFTA to go too far off-base here. At this point, the only films they can really help are Being the Ricardos or The Tragedy of Macbeth (which I’m still not entirely ruling out on account of the Coens having pulled a Best Picture nomination out of nowhere before… though granted that was a year with a set list of ten). Otherwise, you have your nine, so it’s really just gonna come down to how you stagger those last two in case the list cuts off at 8. Which… the DGA and BAFTA should make that pretty easy to do. So yeah, absolutely nothing surprising here at all.
Also, the Animated nominees were Encanto, Luca, Mitchells vs. the Machines, Raya and Sing 2. Which are basically the five that have hit every standard American guild, because they’re all studio-based and have no nuance. Abominable was nominated by the PGA, as was The Grinch, Secret Life of Pets, Minions… you get the picture. Don’t suddenly think Sing 2 is gonna happen. The precursors are important, but you also have to have thoughts of your own.
But yeah, that’s the PGA and all it did was further cement what we already knew (which is really what you should be using it for anyway). I’m just glad they didn’t somehow nominate Spider-Man and add an extra week of bad takes (which are gonna be there anyway because journalism is dead and there are so few people who actually know what they’re doing when it comes to discussing these awards).
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Okay, and now the Editing nominees…
ACE
Dramatic
Belfast
Dune
King Richard
No Time to Die
The Power of the Dog
Comedic
Cruella
Don’t Look Up
The French Dispatch
Licorice Pizza
Tick… Tick… Boom!
What’s the biggest takeaway from this? No West Side Story. Which is interesting, since Tick Tick Boom is considered a Comedy and not a Musical (in the category that used to be Comedy or Musical). I’m curious if they were just gonna put it Dramatic all along and it got squeezed or if it just didn’t rate for them or if they tried nominating it in both and it didn’t get enough in either. Regardless, I’m not putting too much stock into it, because I know how the final category works. It still may not get on, but it won’t be because it missed here. Still, 7/9 of the top films made it on here (CODA never had a chance with them, and if it did get on, then you might as well call it a frontrunner to win Best Picture), so this only further tells you what the top tier of films is gonna be.
Oh, and the five Animated nominees are the exact same five as the PGA. It’s almost as if these people don’t watch enough movies.
Oh, but in Documentary, they nominated Flee, The Rescue, Summer of Soul, Val and Velvet Underground. Which… three of those feel like locks for the final category. Velvet Underground I can’t imagine they’ll nominate, but hey, go nuts.
Also, yes, for those who need the hint, your Editing category is very likely some combination of 5 Best Picture nominees. And I would suspect the likely five are Belfast, Dune, Licorice Pizza, Power of the Dog and West Side Story. It’s possible something sneaks on over Licorice Pizza or West Side Story. I doubt it’s Tick Tick Boom or CODA, which only leaves King Richard and Don’t Look Up. Not sure I fully buy wholesale support for either at the moment, but we’ll see how BAFTA votes.
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And now, the WGA.
Before we get into what’s nominate, know that in the Original Screenplay category — Belfast, A Hero, Parallel Mothers, Pig, Mass, Jockey, Titane, Flee, Annette and Hand of God are all ineligible. And in Adapted, Power of the Dog, Lost Daughter, Drive My Car, Passing, Cyrano are all ineligible.
WGA
Original Screenplay
Being the Ricardos
Don’t Look Up
The French Dispatch
King Richard
Licorice Pizza
Adapted Screenplay
CODA
Dune
Nightmare Alley
Tick… Tick… Boom!
West Side Story
So… all the usual expected scripts, but with French Dispatch instead of the ineligible Belfast and Nightmare Alley instead of the ineligible Power of the Dog. Though Lost Daughter also could potentially make some noise there as well. So that one’s slightly more complicated, but even that’s not that bad because I’m sure BAFTA will clear a lot of that up for us. But right now, you’re pretty set in both of these categories and it’s the same stuff you figured on all along.
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And finally the DGA. What I’m looking for here is the obvious outlier who isn’t gonna make it, because historically the DGA very, very rarely matches 5/5 to the Oscar category. I remember having this stat and it being something like only 8 times ever, including when the DGA had 10 or more nominees before 1970.
Yeah, here it is… they’ve only been 5/5 twice since 2000, three more times between 1970-1999 and three times between 1949-1970. So yeah, definitely look for the odd person out.
However, as I type this before nominations are announced, if I see a DGA category of Paul Thomas Anderson, Kenneth Branagh, Jane Campion, Denis Villeneuve and Steven Spielberg, I’m gonna get real interested, because those are the obvious five. Then we’ll have to wait on BAFTA and decide who the hell sneaks on instead (and likely which foreign nominee it’s gonna be). Or maybe this will be one of the 5/5s for the next 20 years. Who knows. That’s why I like doing this. Figuring that stuff out.
DGA
Paul Thomas Anderson, Licorice Pizza
Kenneth Branagh, Belfast
Jane Campion, The Power of the Dog
Steven Spielberg, West Side Story
Denis Villeneuve, Dune
Well, at least I called it.
Okay then. So unless BAFTA nominates someone else (or somehow Maggie Gyllenhaal or Guillermo get nominated with single precursors), you basically have to decide if it’s just gonna be this simple or if someone’s gonna get nominated with zero precursors (and that person should exclusively be either someone with a Best Picture contender (or something with 4-5 total nominations that just missed out on Picture) or a foreign language nominee. But it sure looks like it’s just gonna end up being these five.
See you in a week for BAFTA.
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