NextGen Oscarwatcher: Temperature check on PGA and DGA

As the fall film festival season approaches, it’s when so many who follow the Oscar race start to doubt certain predictions due to rumors or claims that do not hold sufficient evidence, which can make individuals believe certain things will happen that ultimately do not. This is either due to projects not screening at certain festivals or a film having notable buzz leading up to its premiere. This is a conversation for later in the article, though, and let’s have a quick temperature check on what Awards followers believe will be nominated for PGA and DGA

PGA (Screenshot from Awards Expert App)

As expected, Ryan Coogler’s Sinners is out in front, with a whopping 66% of users predicting a win for Warner Bros’s social horror experiment. Josh Safdie’s Marty Supreme is in second place, then Lanthimos’s Bugonia, Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value, and Jon M. Chu’s Wicked: For Good. Film Twitter is confident that Bugonia will be Focus Features’ top priority, but I will explain later how I have some doubts regarding that, due to its subject matter and another project that can obtain awards traction. 

The rest of the ten include Noah Baumbach’s Jay Kelly, Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another, James Cameron’s Avatar: Fire and Ash, Scott Cooper’s Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, and Hikari’s Rental Family. It’s a reasonable top ten, with a mixture of the indies that present themselves in the Best Picture race, and some more populist contenders, even if the truth is that everyone has different expectations or predictions regarding what will get nominated. 

For my ten, I would probably go with the following

1. Sinners
2. Sentimental Value
3. Jay Kelly
4. Marty Supreme
5. Wicked: For Good
6. Rental Family
7. The Testament of Ann Lee
8. One Battle After Another
9. Hamnet
10. Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere

As alluded to earlier, Focus Features’ major priority is a wild card this year. For the past few weeks, I have been reluctant to include Bugonia, though Lanthimos’s track record with the industry recently has been strong (at least when he isn’t writing his own scripts). Chloe Zhao’s Hamnet, though rumored to be incredibly daring in its exploration of grief, could either be incredibly successful or be a “this had Oscar buzz” sort of project, as Oscar winners tend to either make returns to the race or don’t tend to be invited back. I’ll know more about both of these projects when I see them in Telluride, Colorado, in a few weeks. 

Comparing it to my Best Picture lineup, I currently have 9/10, subbing out Springsteen for Panahi’s It Was Just An Accident, which feels right as it is a Palme D’Or winner and would fit the Academy’s international sensibilities, while the former is a studio musical biopic (though those tend to do well with the academy too). 

Let’s move on to the DGA five

DGA (Screenshot from Awards Expert App)

Unsurprisingly, Coogler is out in front with 73% of users predicting a win for him here. The correlation between the Oscar winner and this precursor is fairly significant, with only a handful of filmmakers having prevailed and lost the category, with many of those said cases (Rob Marshall for Chicago, Francis Ford Coppola for The Godfather, and Ben Affleck for Argo) still winning Best Picture despite either losing or in the case of Affleck, missing the nomination completely. 

Behind him is Joachim Trier for Sentimental Value, Yorgos Lanthismos for Bugonia, Josh Safdie for Marty Supreme, and Paul Thomas Anderson for One Battle After Another. 

On the topic of Jay Kelly, it seems fairly strange for a community to leave him out of the five, but considering how some of the users update predictions, give it a couple of days, and it is more likely than not that he will be in the consensus five. 

For my five, I would probably go with the following

1. Ryan Coogler, Sinners
2. Noah Baumbach, Jay Kelly
3. Joachim Trier, Sentimental Value
4. Josh Safdie, Marty Supreme
5. Jon M. Chu, Wicked: For Good

That last slot is such a mystery because even though I am considering Wicked: For Good to be even more of a contender than the first film, Chu didn’t land in this category, and it was very much a “populist” project that this voting body gravitates towards. If I had to say who the alternative would be, Paul Thomas Anderson for One Battle After Another and Chloe Zhao for Hamnet (if either of these films turns out to be an awards project). Focus Features, in particular, has been spot on in getting nominated here ever since 2019 (starting with Promising Young Woman), so leaving out both Hamnet and Bugonia feels off, but there is a time for everything. I’ll hopefully be seeing both in Colorado soon, and the answer on whether Zhao or Lanthimos is going the distance to the Oscars will be answered then. 

Here is also the DGA five for First Time Feature (From Awards Expert App)

If I had to predict my five at the moment, it would be

1. Eva Victor, Sorry, Baby
2. Harry Lighton, Pillion 
3. Scarlett Johansson, Eleanor the Great
4. Kristen Stewart, The Chronology of Water
5. Harris Dickinson, Urchin

I do caution that the rules for qualifying in this category are very difficult to fully understand, and thus some projects that were once believed to be ineligible might sneak in here.

Oscar Predictions Update

I have made a couple of changes to the Oscar lineups since last week

• I inserted Hamnet over Bugonia in Best Picture for reasons mentioned above (plus its Telluride premiere label is significant)
• I have moved George Clooney into my number one spot in Best Actor, as the buzz for Jay Kelly continues to grow, and Marty Supreme skipping the festivals is making some (myself included) more hesitant to predict it for notable “wins” as late breakers often struggle in that regard. 
• I have also put It Was Just An Accident back into the Original Screenplay, at the expense of Marty Supreme
• I have put in Deliver Me From Nowhere in Adapted Screenplay over Train Dreams due to the amount of buzz for the former ahead of its Telluride premiere
• Jay Kelly is now in casting for Knives Out
• There are a couple of below-the-line changes too, but that’s a bit harder to articulate before more films are seen. 

Here are the predictions for this week

Best Picture

1. Sinners
2. Sentimental Value
3. Jay Kelly
4. Marty Supreme
5. Wicked for Good
6. The Testament of Ann Lee
7. Rental Family
8. One Battle After Another
9. Hamnet
10. It Was Just an Accident

Best Director

1. Ryan Coogler, Sinners
2. Joachim Trier, Sentimental Value
3. Josh Safdie, Marty Supreme
4. Mona Fastvold, The Testament of Ann Lee
5. Noah Baumbach, Jay Kelly

Best Actress

1. Amanda Seyfried, The Testament of Ann Lee
2. Cynthia Erivo, Wicked: For Good
3. Julia Roberts, After the Hunt
4. Renate Reinsve, Sentimental Value
5. Jessie Buckley, Hamnet

Best Actor

1. George Clooney, Jay Kelly
2. Timothee Chalamet, Marty Supreme
3. Jeremy Allen White, Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere
4. Brendan Fraser, Rental Family
5. Wagner Moura, The Secret Agent

Best Supporting Actress

1. Mari Yamamoto, Rental Family
2. Gwyneth Paltrow, Marty Supreme
3. Ariana Grande, Wicked: For Good
4. Elle Fanning, Sentimental Value
5. Laura Dern, Jay Kelly

Best Supporting Actor

1. Stellan Skarsgård, Sentimental Value
2. Adam Sandler, Jay Kelly
3. Stephen Graham, Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere
4. Andrew Garfield, After The Hunt
5. Delroy Lindo, Sinners

Best Original Screenplay

1. Jay Kelly
2. Sentimental Value
3. Sinners
4. Rental Family
5. It Was Just An Accident

Best Adapted Screenplay

1. One Battle After Another
2. Hamnet
3. Bugonia
4. Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery
5. Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere

Best Casting

1. Sinners
2. Marty Supreme
3. Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere
4. Rental Family
5. Jay Kelly

Best Cinematography

1. The Testament of Ann Lee
2. Frankenstein
3. Marty Supreme
4. Sinners
5. Jay Kelly

Best Editing

1. Sinners
2. Marty Supreme
3. Sentimental Value
4. One Battle After Another
5. Wicked: For Good

Best Production Design

1. Wicked: For Good
2. Frankenstein
3. Ann Lee
4. Avatar: Fire and Ash
5. Sinners

Best Costume Design

1. Wicked: For Good
2. Frankenstein
3. Ann Lee
4. Sinners
5. Hamnet

Best Makeup and Hairstyling

1. Frankenstein
2. Wicked: For Good
3. The Smashing Machine
4. Sinners
5. 28 Years Later

Best Visual Effects

1. Avatar: Fire and Ash
2. Superman
3. Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning
4. The Fantastic Four: First Steps
5. Wicked: For Good

Best Sound

1. F1
2. Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere
3. Sinners
4. Avatar: Fire and Ash
5. One Battle After Another

Best Score

1. Sinners
2. Ann Lee
3. Frankenstein
4. Jay Kelly
5. Hamnet

Best Original Song

1. Wicked: For Good (Cynthia Erivo)
2. Ann Lee
3. Dear Me  (Diane Warren Biopic)
4. Wicked Song #2 (Ariana Grande)
5. I Lied To You from Sinners

Best International Feature

1. Sentimental Value
2. The Secret Agent
3. Sound Of Falling
4. No Other Choice
5. It Was Just an Accident (though if it is not submitted, considering the director’s relationship with the country, and no one picks it up, I would go with The Voice of Hind Rajab)

Best Animated Feature

1. A Magnificent Life
2. Little Amélie or the Character of Rain
3. Arco
4. Zootopia 2
5. Scarlet

Best Documentary Feature

1. The Perfect Neighbor
2. Mr. Nobody Against Putin
3. Cutting Through Rocks
4. Seeds
5. 2000 Meters to Andriivka

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