SAG Awards Noms: Embracing Ensembles
Two films dominated the SAG Award nominations, both earning nods for the cast as an acting collective and individual nods for their performers.
In an awards season where certain nominees seem to be Everything Everywhere All at Once, the announcement of this year’s SAG contenders didn’t offer too many surprises, and indeed seemed to solidify the key favorites as Oscar voting gets underway.
With vital wins at both the Golden Globes and Critics Choice Awards, A24’s Everything Everywhere may be proving itself to be the film to beat. It netted five nods at the SAGs, including best cast, lead actress Michelle Yeoh, supporting actor Ke Huy Quan and supporting actresses Jamie Lee Curtis and Stephanie Hsu.
But Searchlight’s The Banshees of Inisherin tied Everything Everywhere‘s haul: Besides best cast, lead actor Colin Farrell (a Globe winner) earned a nod, as did supporting players Kerry Condon, Brendan Gleeson and Barry Keoghan. Considering the prominent overlap between SAG and the Academy’s actors branch, this is a good sign that the eight actors in these two features may receive Oscar noms on Jan. 24.
But there’s always a plot twist in awards season, and it came with the surprising omission of The Fablemans‘ Michelle Williams in the lead actress race. (She decided early on to campaign in the crowded best actress field instead of supporting.) Paul Dano was nominated in the supporting category, however — the only Fabelmans star to get an individual acting nomination. Babylon and Women Talking also received best cast noms, but failed to net individual honors for their stars.
While not a surprise given theatrical’s dominance this awards season, the SAG Awards showed a reversal of fortune for Netflix in the film categories. Last year, it led the film noms with seven nods, but this year had only three — all were somewhat unexpected, given their lack of mentions at other awards podiums: Hustle‘s Adam Sandler (actor), Blonde‘s Ana de Armas (actress) and The Good Nurse‘s Eddie Redmayne (supporting actor). Still, Netflix was the only streamer to be noticed in the film categories.
Netflix had a far better showing on the television side: It accumulated 12 nominations for The Crown, Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, Inventing Anna, Ozark, Stranger Things and Wednesday, with the recently wrapped Ozark leading the nominated shows with four nods.
Just before the nominations announcement, Netflix and SAG-AFTRA revealed their upcoming partnership, which will see Netflix airing the SAG Awards live on the streamer beginning in 2024. (This year’s ceremony, which did not have a home after the guild ended its partnership with TNT last year, will be streamed on Netflix’s YouTube account Feb. 26.) — Tyler Coates
PGA Awards Noms: Sequels and Blockbusters Galore
The PGA noms, announced Jan. 12, often give a sense of what to expect when the Oscar best picture nominations are announced — though this year, we might be in for a few surprises.
From left: Tom Cruise in Top Gun: Maverick; Kate Hudson, Leslie Odom Jr. and Kathryn Hahn in Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery; Brendan Fraser in The Whale; Kate Winslet in Avatar: The Way of Water; Cate Blanchett in Tár; and Angela Bassett in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
Courtesy of Paramount Pictures; Courtesy of Netflix; Courtesy of A24; Courtesy of 20th Century Studios; Courtesy of Focus Features; Eli Adé/Marvel Studios.
The Producers Guild of America announced its 2023 film and TV nominees Jan. 12, and among its candidates for the top prize, the Darryl F. Zanuck Award, historically considered a strong precursor of the best picture Oscar, were some expected titles — and some surprises.
Leading contenders Avatar: The Way of Water, The Banshees of Inisherin, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Elvis, Everything Everywhere All at Once, The Fabelmans, Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, Tár and Top Gun: Maverick made the list. So did The Whale, a surprising pick for a relatively small-scale production in light of its absence from other major guild and critics organizations (apart from acting nods for Brendan Fraser, a winner at the Critics Choice Awards, and Hong Chau) and its polarizing reviews.
Notably, four sequels/follow-ups — and major blockbusters — made the list: Avatar, Wakanda Forever, Glass Onion and Maverick. No movies in the top category were directed by women, though opportunities were aplenty: Films including Women Talking, The Woman King, She Said and Aftersun have been making great strides throughout the season.
The animation category was unsurprising, other than the inclusion of Minions: The Rise of Gru rather than Netflix’s stop-motion Wendell & Wild. The list was rounded out by frontrunners Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, Marcel the Shell With Shoes On, Puss in Boots: The Last Wish and Turning Red.
Seven of the past 10 PGA winners went on to win the Academy Award for best picture, including the past two winners, CODA and Nomadland. (In 2020, the PGA picked 1917 over the Oscar-winning Parasite.) The lineups for the PGA traditionally resemble the Oscar noms for best picture, minus a few titles. Ahead of the Academy’s Jan. 24 announcement, this is good news for The Whale, which has now boosted its Oscar chances — and it shows that female-directed films like The Woman King and Women Talking must rely on last-minute momentum during the nominations voting window, which closed Jan. 17. — Beatrice Verhoeven
DGA Awards: Women Shut Out, Again
While four up-and-coming female filmmakers were honored with first-time directing nods, only men were nominated for the guild’s top honor.
While female directors were shut out in the top DGA Awards category, women dominated the first-time feature director category. Four nominees for the first-time feature directing, from left: Happening’s Audrey Diwan, Saint Omer’s Alice Diop, Aftersun’s Charlotte Wells and Murina’s Antoneta Alamat Kusijanović.
Elisabetta A. Villa/Getty Images (2); Jamie Mccarthy/Getty Images; Mike Coppola/Getty Images
Six male filmmakers — Todd Field (Tár), Joseph Kosinski (Top Gun: Maverick), the filmmaking duo Daniels (Everything Everywhere All at Once), Martin McDonagh (The Banshees of Inisherin) and Steven Spielberg (The Fabelmans) will compete for the Directors Guild of America’s award for directorial achievement in feature film, the first all-male lineup in two years.
Notably missing from the Jan. 11 noms were The Woman King helmer Gina Prince-Bythewood and Women Talking writer-director Sarah Polley, two of the strongest female contenders for best director this season. The advocacy group Women in Film issued a statement after the announcement of the DGA noms to express its disappointment in the guild for overlooking Prince-Bythewood and Polley, as well as Maria Schrader (She Said) and Chinonye Chukwu (Till).
Another notable absence from the nominee lineup is James Cameron, a DGA Award winner in 1998 for Titanic and a nominee in 2010 for Avatar. The director’s Avatar: The Way of Water remains a leading contender for best picture, although Cameron’s chances for a third Oscar nom for best director have slimmed. Also missing is Babylon writer-director Damien Chazelle, the youngest person to have won the Oscar for best director and a DGA winner for La La Land.
While female directors were shut out in the top category, women dominated the first-time feature director category. Alice Diop (Saint Omer), Audrey Diwan (Happening), Antoneta Alamat Kusijanović (Murina) and Charlotte Wells (Aftersun) all received nods, as did Emily the Criminal helmer John Patton Ford.
But while up-and-coming female talent fared well among the DGA noms, WIF also took the guild to task for relegating women to what could be seen as a junior category. “It’s heartening to see a majority of the nominees for First-Time Theatrical Director to be women, but this is a clear illustration of the problems underrepresented people face with career sustainability in our industry,” said the group. — Tyler Coates
This story first appeared in the Jan. 18 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
