No Oscar precursor’s top award is more informative about the best picture Oscar race than the Producers Guild of America’s, known as the Darryl F. Zanuck Award.
The PGA is about the same size as the Academy — both have about 10,000 members. The PGA and the Academy each nominates 10 films for its top honor. And, like the Academy but almost no other awards group, the PGA uses a weighted preferential ballot to select that category’s winner.
But before examining the track record of the groups picking the same winner, it’s worth looking at when they have differed on nominees — they tend to overlap on all but one or two titles a year. The ones on which they diverge, however, are fairly consistent: The PGA goes for big, commercial studio projects (Deadpool in 2017, Crazy Rich Asians and A Quiet Place in 2018, Knives Out in 2020), and the Academy — a more international organization — opts instead for low-budget indies (2015’s Room), projects in a language other than English (2021’s Drive My Car) and late-year releases (2021’s Nightmare Alley).
Consider the 2012 awards season as a stark example. The PGA’s list of 10 included Bridesmaids and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. The Academy that year handed out nine noms and replaced those with The Tree of Life and Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close. (The Artist won the Zanuck prize and best picture Oscar that year.)
In 2018, Wonder Woman and I, Tonya were nominated by the PGA but were ignored by the Academy, which nominated Darkest Hour and Phantom Thread. (The Shape of Water won both.) In 2021, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm landed a PGA nom but didn’t get one from the Academy, which placed The Father on its list. (Both organizations picked Nomadland.) And in 2023, the Academy replaced the PGA nominees Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery and The Whale with Triangle of Sadness, Women Talking and All Quiet on the Western Front. (Everything Everywhere All at Once won at the PGAs and Oscars.)
In years past, the PGA was more likely than the Academy to nominate an animated film for its top prize. Both have a dedicated animated feature category, but that hasn’t stopped the producers from nominating as their overall top film 2001’s Shrek and 2004’s The Incredibles, neither of which received best picture Oscar noms.
Given all this history, shoo-ins for noms from both groups this year seem to be American Fiction, Barbie, The Holdovers, Killers of the Flower Moon, Maestro, Oppenheimer, Past Lives and Poor Things. The PGA might be more inclined than the Academy to nominate the acclaimed animated film Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and the studio blockbuster The Color Purple, and the Academy seems more likely than the PGA to nominate the French film Anatomy of a Fall or the German-language U.K. film The Zone of Interest.
Then again, perhaps these groups will surprise us. We’ll find out when the PGA and the Academy announce their nominations on Jan. 12 and Jan. 23, respectively.
This story first appeared in the Jan. 4 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.