‘Oppenheimer’ Wins Top Prize at Producers Guild Awards

Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” took a big step toward completing one of the most dominant awards-season runs in recent history on Sunday night, winning the top feature-film prize at the 35th annual Producers Guild Awards.

The win gives “Oppenheimer” a sweep of the three major Hollywood guilds that have handed out awards so far – the Directors Guild, Screen Actors Guild and Producers Guild – and makes it a prohibitive favorite to win the Academy Award for Best Picture in two weeks.

In the 29 years that the DGA, SAG and PGA have been giving out awards, 10 films have won all three. The first to do so was 1995’s “Apollo 13,” which lost Best Picture to “Braveheart”; the other nine that swept those three guilds have all won at the Oscars as well. The most recent was last year’s “Everything Everywhere All at Once.”

Over the years, the Producers Guild has been one of the most reliable of all Best Picture predictors – particularly since 2009, when the Academy and the guild both moved from five to 10 nominees and instituted ranked-choice voting in their top category. In that stretch, almost 80% of the PGA winners have gone on to win Best Picture, a conclusion that now seems all but certain for “Oppenheimer.”

In the PGA’s other feature-film categories,  “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” scored the prize for Outstanding Producer of Animated Theatrical Motion Pictures, buttressing its status as the Oscar frontrunner for Best Animated Feature.

Matthew Heineman’s “American Symphony,” which followed musician Jon Batiste as he prepared his first symphony and his wife Suleika Jaouad as she fought cancer, won the documentary award. It was director-producer Heineman’s first win after three previous nominations. The winner of this category has won the Best Documentary Feature Oscar for the last three years in a row, a streak that ends this year as “American Symphony” was a surprise snub in the Oscar list.

In the main television categories, the same three programs won that have been winning all season. Hulu’s “The Bear” won the award for episodic comedy, the final season of HBO’s “Succession” won for episodic drama and Netflix’s “Beef” won for limited series.

Other winners included “RuPaul’s Drag Race” (Outstanding Producer of Game & Competition Television), “Welcome to Wrexham” (Outstanding Producer of Nonfiction Television), “Black Mirror: Beyond the Sea” (Outstanding Producer of Televised or Streamed Motion Pictures) and “Last Week Tonight With John Oliver” (Live Entertainment, Variety, Sketch, Standup & Talk).

The Producers Guild also bestowed three honorary awards at the ceremony. The Norman Lean Achievement Award went to Oscar nominated producer and studio executive Gail Berman (“Elvis,” “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”), while Oscar nominated producer Charles D. King (“Fences,” “Judas and the Black Messiah”) received the Milestone Award, which was presented by director Ryan Coogler.

And legendary director and producer Martin Scorsese, a current Oscar nominee for “Killers of the Flower Moon,” was honored with the David O. Selznick Award. Guillermo del Toro presented the prize, singling out Scorsese’s embrace of world cinema and his longtime bona fides as a film preservationist, in addition to his work as a producer.

Here is the list of nominees. Winners are indicated with *WINNER. The results in four categories – sports program, children’s program and short-form program and the PGA Innovation Award – were announced earlier in the week at special gatherings in New York and Los Angeles.

The winners:

Darryl F. Zanuck Award for Outstanding Producer of Theatrical Motion Pictures
“American Fiction”
“Anatomy of a Fall”
“Barbie”
“The Holdovers”
“Killers of the Flower Moon”
“Maestro”
“Oppenheimer” *WINNER
“Past Lives”
“Poor Things”
“The Zone of Interest”

Award for Outstanding Producer of Animated Theatrical Motion Pictures
“The Boy and the Heron”
“Elemental”
“Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” *WINNER
“The Super Mario Bros. Movie”
“Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem”

Norman Felton Award for Outstanding Producer of Episodic Television,Drama
“The Crown” 
“The Diplomat” 
“The Last of Us” 
“The Morning Show”
“Succession” *WINNER

Danny Thomas Award for Outstanding Producer of Episodic Television, Comedy
“Barry” 
“The Bear” *WINNER
“Jury Duty” 
“Only Murders in the Building” 
“Ted Lasso”

David L. Wolper Award for Outstanding Producer of Limited or Anthology Series Television
“All the Light We Cannot See” 
“Beef” *WINNER
“Daisy Jones & the Six” 
“Fargo” 
“Lessons in Chemistry”

Award for Outstanding Producer of Televised or Streamed Motion Pictures
“Black Mirror: Beyond the Sea” *WINNER
“Mr. Monk’s Last Case: A Monk Movie”
“Quiz Lady”
“Reality”
“Red, White & Royal Blue”

Award for Outstanding Producer of Nonfiction Television
“60 Minutes” 
“The 1619 Project”
“Albert Brooks: Defending My Life”
“Being Mary Tyler Moore”
“Welcome to Wrexham” *WINNER

Award for Outstanding Producer of Live Entertainment, Variety, Sketch, Standup & Talk Television
“Carol Burnett: 90 Years Of Laughter + Love” 
“Chris Rock: Selective Outrage” 
“Dave Chappelle: The Dreamer”
“Last Week Tonight With John Oliver” *WINNER
“Saturday Night Live”

Award for Outstanding Producer of Game & Competition Television
“The Amazing Race” 
“RuPaul’s Drag Race” *WINNER
“Squid Game: The Challenge” 
“Top Chef” 
“The Voice”

The Award for Outstanding Producer of Documentary Motion Picture
“20 Days in Mariupol” 
“American Symphony” *WINNER
“Beyond Utopia” 
“The Disappearance of Shere Hite” 
“The Mother of All Lies” 
“Smoke Sauna Sisterhood” 
“Squaring the Circle (The Story of Hipgnosis)”

The Award for Outstanding Sports Program
“100 Foot Wave” 
“Beckham” *WINNER
“Formula 1: Drive to Survive” 
“Hard Knocks: Training Camp With the New York Jets” 
“Shaun White: The Last Run”

The Award for Outstanding Children’s Program
“Goosebumps” 
“Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai” 
“Sesame Street” *WINNER
“Star Wars: The Bad Batch”
“The Velveteen Rabbit”

The Award for Outstanding Short-Form Program
“Carpool Karaoke: The Series”
“I Think You Should Leave With Tim Robinson” 
“The Last of Us: Inside the Episode” 
“Only Murders in the Building: One Killer Question” 
“Succession: Controlling the Narrative” *WINNER

PGA Innovation Award
“The World’s Largest Tailgate” (Kansas City Chiefs)
“Reimagined” (Very Cavaliere Productions)
“Out of Scale, A Kurzgesagt Adventure” (Meta)
“Wallace & Gromit in The Grand Getaway” (Aardman)
“Body of Mine” (Kost) *WINNER
“Our Ocean Our Future” (Hidden Worlds Entertainment)
“JFK Memento” (TARGO)
“Letters from Drancy” (East City Films)
“The EYE AND I” (EDDA)
“Ocean of Light- Dolphins VR” (Meta Quest)
“Space Explorers: Blue Marble Trilogy” (Felix & Paul Studios)
“MLK: Now is the Time” (TIME Studios)

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