Producers Guild Preview and Predictions

The first industry award of the 2018-2019 Oscar season is here and it’s the biggest of them all: the Producers Guild of America (PGA) award.

Since its inception in 1989, the PGA award has been our most consistent bellwether for the eventual Oscar Best Picture winner. In 29 years, the two have matched up 20 times (the first year is bit a wash as the PGA came two days after the Oscars) but the most important era to concentrate on the post-expansion era where the PGA and the Academy both left the Top 5 behind for a full Top 10 (as the PGA does) or an open 5-10 (as the Academy now employs). In this era, since 2009, the two have matched up 7/9 times with outliers like 2015’s The Big Short and 2016’s La La Land taking the PGA but Oscar choosing Spotlight and Moonlight, respectively. In last year’s heated race, where The Shape of Water and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri kept trading laurels back and forth, it was the PGA’s choice of The Shape of Water that probably clinched it for its eventual Best Picture triumph. The bigger correlation between the two bodies is that they use the same preferential ballot method for voting on winners. Meaning, it’s not simply the film with the most votes that wins; it’s the film that earns the consensus vote (meaning not just #1s but those important #2 and #3 votes) that gives us our winner.

It would be too easy to peg a group like the PGA as simply wanting to go for a money-maker – like Black Panther or Bohemian Rhapsody or Crazy Rich Asians – even though these are the money folks that build a film production from the ground up. They’ve rewarded everything from the highest grossing film of all time (at the time) with Titanic to the smallest grossing Best Picture (and PGA) winner in the modern era with The Hurt Locker. For many films this is where the tide turned in the race and the industry revealed where it was leaning vs where critics and other non-industry groups had planted their flags. Think The Social Network giving way to The King’s Speech and Boyhood falling behind Birdman.

A film’s connection to a Screen Actors Guild Cast nomination used to be crucial but the last two winners have been able to jump that hurdle. That spells hope for the likes of Green Book, ROMA, The Favourite or Vice. A stronger connection is another guild, the Directors Guild (DGA). To date, no film has ever won the PGA without a DGA nomination first. So that potentially reduces the group of 10 to BlacKkKlansman, Green Book, ROMA, A Star Is Born and Vice. I would not count out a Green Book win here for a minute. That said, if you do go ahead and add the SAG Cast nominees in to further bring that number down you only have two films: BlacKkKlansman and A Star Is Born.

Each of those films has a strong narrative to tell as to why it could and should win. BlacKkKlansman is a critical smash and one of Spike Lee’s biggest box office hits at nearly $50M on a $15M budget. It’s a Cannes winner with prestige and very urgent social message. A Star Is Born, while a 4th version of a tried and true Hollywood story, is also a box office success with over $200M on a $36M budget for a first-time director. Those are both extremely appealing numbers and storylines for a group of producers. It’s almost looking a bit like 2014 when 12 Years a Slave and Gravity shockingly tied at the PGA, a first. Would I predict a tie again? No way, that was an anomaly to be sure.

Part of looking at the potential PGA winner and flash-forwarding to the Oscars and what other wins the eventual Best Picture winner can get. The year Spotlight won the Oscar it only brought along with it Original Screenplay, giving it the lowest totals wins for a BP in decades. This year, if you’re thinking A Star Is Born wins PGA on its way to a Best Picture win, what else does it get? Is Cooper beating Cuarón for Director? Not likely, although actor-turned-director wins are something the Academy has embraced in the past. Is Cooper beating Malek in Best Actor? Maybe, but that seems like a longer shot than it used to be. What about Gaga over Close? Seems far from the shallow now. There’s no way it’s winning Adapted Screenplay (if it even gets nominated there) so where else does ASIB go? Over at The Wrap, Steve Pond makes the case for why it needs the PGA.

BlacKkKlansman has a recipe for a modern day PGA win. Even if Spike Lee doesn’t win DGA or Best Director at the Oscars, we could see his film pulling a Spotlight and getting BP and Adapted Screenplay (if it can beat Beale Street, which is not PGA, DGA or SAG nominated, not totally out of the realm of possibility). This would give Lee, who just received an Honorary Oscar three years ago (does this hurt or help him?), a long-awaited competitive win. It would also give producer Jordan Peele, who was PGA and Best Picture nominated last year with his own box office triumph, Get Out, a win. A win for BlacKkKlansman (which the AwardsDaily crew is overwhelmingly choosing) checks a lot of boxes and sets up Lee for a bit of a coup; having only appeared at the Cannes Film Festival, it bypassed the fall fests. It would be the first film since The Artist to accomplish that.

Then there’s ROMA. A foreign language film has never won the PGA, or the Best Picture Oscar, for that matter. The sheer amount of hurdles the film has to overcome seems insurmountable. Plus, where’s the box office? Will a group that knows and understands the money game give their biggest prize to a studio that keeps its cards so close to its vest? Sure, ROMA is still in theaters and Netflix acquiesced and released it there before streaming but it is enough? I’ll say this; if it wins at the PGA (and Cuarón’s got DGA on lock) then it’s going all the way.

As a reminder, here is the list of films and their producers up for tonight’s PGA Award for Theatrical Motion Pictures.

BlacKkKlansman — Sean McKittrick, Jason Blum, Raymond Mansfield, Jordan Peele, and Spike Lee
Green Book — Jim Burke, Charles B. Wessler, Brian Currie, Peter Farrelly, and Nick Vallelonga
ROMA — Gabriela Rodríguez and Alfonso Cuarón
A Star Is Born — Bill Gerber, Bradley Cooper, and Lynette Howell Taylor
Vice — Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner, Kevin Messick, and Adam McKay
Black Panther – Kevin Feige
Bohemian Rhapsody – Graham King
Crazy Rich Asians – Nina Jacobson, Brad Simpson, and John Penotti
The Favourite – Ceci Dempsey, Ed Guiney, Lee Magiday, and Yorgos Lanthimos
A Quiet Place – Michael Bay, Andrew Form, and Bradley Fuller

My predictions:

Best Theatrical Motion Picture
BlacKkKlansman

Animated Motion Picture
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

Documentary Theatrical Motion Picture
Won’t You Be My Neighbor?