Producers Guild (PGA) and Screen Actors Actors Guild (SAG) Awards Predictions: More ‘One Battle’ vs ‘Sinners’ Provide the Final Showdowns Before Oscar
This year, predicting the winner of the Producers Guild award for theatrical feature film is pretty easy. With voting overlapping with the Directors Guild, where Paul Thomas Anderson won, and ending before the DGA Awards–on top of its wins at Critics Choice and the Golden Globes before–his One Battle After Another should be able to sail to an easy win here. Why would they split? We know what split years look like and this isn’t one of them.
The Screen Actors Guild Awards, which have been renamed The Actor Awards presented by SAG-AFTRA (I won’t be using that name for a while, these are the SAG Awards), are another story. Outside of the lock that is Jessie Buckley Female Actor in a Leading Role for Hamnet, there are more open races here than we’re used to with precursor split wins in both supporting categories and lead actor having a weak frontrunner in Timothée Chalamet, who has to overcome history in order to win here for a second year in a row.
Chalamet (Marty Supreme) won Critics Choice and the Golden Globe (both journalist organizations) then lost the BAFTA to someone not nominated for the Oscar (Robert Aramayo for I Swear). This presented itself with an interesting scenario as it was basically a zero sum result and the second best Chalamet could ask for. He didn’t lose to any of his competition in the first and only industry race so far but losing is never a good thing. He just won here last year for A Complete Unknown (but lost the Oscar to Adrien Brody’s second Best Actor win) and in the 32 years of the SAG Awards no one has won two years in a row. Now, in the world of awards, 32 years isn’t a long time and I don’t think anyone would argue that if they had started a year earlier, Tom Hanks would have begun as a back-to-back winner (for 1993’s Philadelphia and 1994’s Forrest Gump) just like he was at the Oscars. I’m sticking with Chalamet but Michael B. Jordan is the spoiler here for Sinners. Or is it vice versa?
So far, both of the supporting races have gone to different people in all three precursors so far: in supporting actor, Jacob Elordi (Frankenstein) won Critics Choice, Stellan Skarsgård (Sentimental Value) won the Golden Globe and Sean Penn (One Battle After Another) won BAFTA. In supporting actress, Amy Madigan (Weapons) won Critics Choice, Teyana Taylor (One Battle After Another) won the Golden Globe and Wunmi Mosaku (Sinners) won BAFTA. Does that make SAG the decider?
If all things were equal, yes. All three are in strong films with multiple nominations, including Best Picture. Elordi has the benefit of a likely makeup and hairstyling win (as well as the likely coffee table awards), Skarsgård isn’t nominated here so he’s not a factor, and Penn is surging big time over his co-star Benicio del Toro, who entered this phase of the race as the overwhelming critics’ favorite (but not enough for Critics Choice, apparently). Even as a two-time Oscar winner, Penn has never won both BAFTA and SAG for the same role, last weekend’s BAFTA win was his first ever. Barring some wild outlier (like a Miles Caton or Paul Mescal win, but wouldn’t that be fun?), Penn should be able to take this, opening the door to his third Oscar. His biggest competition is internal, with co-star Benicio del Toro, but the wave has shifted to Penn these last few weeks and del Toro winning here would be an odd outcome.
Supporting Actress feels a bit more complicated. There’s an argument to be made for Madigan here as SAG can often have a soft spot for veterans and/or people they haven’t been able to (or chose not to) reward before. While Madigan is obviously not on the level of Meryl Streep or Denzel Washington, both of those Oscar winners didn’t win SAG until long after their Oscar wins; Streep by virtue of the nonexistence of the award at the time of her early heyday then winning for 2008’s Doubt and Washington losing to Russell Crowe back in 2001 and then flipping the script at the Oscars. But, his first SAG win was for 2016’s Fences, an Oscar bid he would then lose to Casey Affleck. As the two contenders in the top two films at both SAG and the Oscars, Taylor and Mosaku are probably neck and neck here. Taylor largely because she was expected to have a slightly better run than she has and Mosaku for that BAFTA win that has sparked conversation of not just the overall likability of her character but as the most likely individual winner for her film. A very tough call here.
The thing that gives me more pause, and it should, is that we haven’t had four individual winners here without at least one of them being a person of color since 2019. One thing SAG has consistently been better at than the Oscars is awarding non-white contenders, particularly in lead. This year, Jordan and either Mosaku or Taylor feel like the most likely candidates to keep that overall streak going. There’s also the general inconsistency of a coalition of winners from the same film; it’s happened recently with Oppenheimer and Everything Everywhere All At Once, both films that won at least two individual awards and the cast award, then Best Picture. Last year, all five (as well as stunts) went to different films.
For the top award, Cast in a Motion Picture, the prevailing thought is that this is Sinners‘ to lose and I would mostly agree. Is it a film that needs an individual award to go along with it? Probably not, many haven’t (Black-led films like Hidden Figures or Black Panther stand out). Conclave didn’t need it last year, where eventual Best Picture winner Anora and Best Actress winner Mikey Madison both lost here. Sinners has the depth and diversity of cast that we’ve seen win here before. It’s got five nominations and is the biggest hit and crowdpleaser of the bunch. But then there’s One Battle After Another, with seven nominations and also a depth and diversity of cast, a nomination in every individual category, plus cast and stunt ensemble, a SAG record. Does it need an individual win in order to pull off a top win as well? Also no, but like Sinners, it doesn’t hurt. That’s all to say that I don’t think Sinners winning top award here is a slam dunk, One Battle is absolutely going to give it chase.
Here are my PGA and SAG Awards winner predictions for feature film.
PGA Awards
Darryl F. Zanuck Award for Outstanding Producer of Theatrical Motion Pictures
Predicted winner: One Battle After Another
Spoiler: Sinners
Other nominees: Bugonia, F1, Frankenstein, Hamnet, Marty Supreme, Sentimental Value, Train Dreams, Weapons
Outstanding Producer of Documentary Theatrical Motion Pictures
Predicted winner: The Perfect Neighbor
Spoiler: Cover-Up
Other nominees: The Alabama Solution, Mr Nobody Against Putin, My Mom Jayne, Ocean with David Attenborough, The Tale of Silyan
Outstanding Producer of Animated Theatrical Motion Pictures
Predicted winner: KPop Demon Hunters
Spoiler: Zootopia 2
Other nominees: The Bad Guys 2, Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Infinity Castle, Elio
SAG Awards
Cast in a Motion Picture
Predicted winner: Sinners
Spoiler: One Battle After Another
Other nominees: Frankenstein, Hamnet, Marty Supreme
Male Actor in a Leading Role
Predicted winner: Timothée Chalamet, Marty Supreme
Spoiler: Michael B. Jordan, Sinners
Other nominees: Leonardo DiCaprio, One Battle After Another; Ethan Hawke, Blue Moon; Jesse Plemons, Bugonia
Female Actor in a Leading Role
Predicted winner: Jessie Buckley, Hamnet
Spoiler: Rose Byrne, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You
Other nominees: Kate Hudson, Song Sung Blue; Chase Infiniti, One Battle After Another; Emma Stone, Bugonia
Male Actor in a Supporting Role
Predicted winner: Sean Penn, One Battle After Another
Spoiler: Jacob Elordi, Frankenstein
Other nominees: Miles Caton, Sinners; Benicio del Toro, One Battle After Another; Paul Mescal, Hamnet
Female Actor in a Supporting Role
Predicted winner: Teyana Taylor, One Battle After Another
Spoiler: Wunmi Mosaku, Sinners
Other nominees: Odessa A’zion, Marty Supreme; Ariana Grande, Wicked: For Good; Amy Madigan, Weapons
Stunt Ensemble in a Motion Picture
Predicted winner: Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning
Spoiler: Frankenstein
Other nominees: F1, One Battle After Another, Sinners
He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Critics Choice Association (CCA), San Francisco Bay Area Film Critics Circle (SFBAFCC) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.
- Producers Guild (PGA) and Screen Actors Actors Guild (SAG) Awards Predictions: More ‘One Battle’ vs ‘Sinners’ Provide the Final Showdowns Before Oscar - February 25, 2026
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