Analysis: Oscar Race Clarified as Directors, Producers, Writers and Editors Weigh In

On Thursday, the same day Oscar nomination voting opened, a quartet of Hollywood’s highest-profile guilds (the Directors Guild of America and the Writers Guild of America), trade associations (the Producers Guild of America) and honorary professional societies (the American Cinema Editors) weighed in with their own nominations, which could offer hints of what’s to come from the Academy.

Not unexpectedly, the day’s biggest beneficiaries were Dune and Licorice Pizza, which were the only two films to register in the top category (or one of the equally valued top categories) of all four groups. Belfast and The Power of the Dog landed with all three for which they were eligible (the WGA only considers titles made under the terms of its Minimum Basic Agreement, which few non-American productions are). West Side Story missed only with ACE. And Tick, Tick … Boom!, King Richard and Don’t Look Up missed only with the DGA (although Tick, Tick … Boom! helmer Lin-Manuel Miranda did land a nom for best first-time director).

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Beyond those eight films, three others scored multiple mentions: CODA and Being the Ricardos, with the PGA and the WGA, and The French Dispatch, with the WGA and the ACE.

Meanwhile, advancing with just the WGA is Nightmare Alley and with just the ACE are No Time to Die and Cruella.

What do Thursday’s developments actually tell us about the Oscar race?

On one level, not as much as these sorts of nominations used to, for reasons I explained in a column posted earlier today: in short, an unprecedented 25 percent of Academy members are now based outside of the U.S., and most of them do not belong to Hollywood’s guilds, trade associations and honorary professional societies, so their tastes are currently unaccounted for, meaning a lot can still change — particularly to the benefit of formidable non-English-language contenders like Drive My Car, Parallel Mothers, The Hand of God, The Worst Person in the World and A Hero.

On the other hand, there are a number of films that almost certainly would have shown up among these nominations if they were actually in serious contention of landing a best picture Oscar nomination, but did not.

Whenever the PGA — the only one of these groups that has a single category with 10 slots, just like the Academy — and the Academy differ on their top nominees, it is almost always a case of the PGA highlighting a populist blockbuster and the Academy then bouncing it for something artier. This fate befell recent PGA nominees Bridesmaids and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo in 2012, Straight Outta Compton in 2016, Deadpool in 2017, Wonder Woman in 2018, Crazy Rich Asians and A Quiet Place in 2019, Knives Out in 2020 and Borat Subsequent Moviefilm in 2021.

And it also happened with the Bond film Skyfall in 2013, which, to me, hammers home that the PGA is open to nominating a Bond film, but opted not to do so this year with No Time to Die — and if a movie like No Time to Die can’t make it with the PGA, it’s highly doubtful that it can make it with the Academy. The same also goes for this season’s only serious contender that was an even bigger hit: Spider-Man: No Way Home.

Now that all of the major industry “precursor awards” have weighed in, it’s worth stepping back to see which films have — and have not — clicked across the town. (Based on recent history, the film with the most precursor noms doesn’t necessarily win the best picture Oscar, but given that every branch of the Academy gets to weigh in on the best picture Oscar category, it certainly gets nominated; and virtually all best picture nominees have made a respectable showing among the precursors.)

Dune is way out in front of the field with 12 precursor noms — indeed, it has literally been nominated for the top prize of every group except SAG’s best ensemble award: PGA, DGA, WGA, ACE, American Society of Cinematographers, Art Directors Guild, Cinema Audio Society, Costume Designers Guild, Make-Up and Hairstylists, Motion Picture Sound Editors, Society of Composers and Lyricists, and Visual Effects Society. In other words, it should be taken very seriously — more seriously than many have been taking it — in the Oscar race.

With eight precursor noms each are The Power of the Dog (PGA, DGA, ACE, ASC, CAS, CDG, SCL and MPSE) and West Side Story (PGA, DGA, WGA, ADG, CAS, CDG, MPSE and MUHS), although both of them, like Dune, also — and even more inexplicably — missed a best ensemble SAG nom. West Side Story is also coming off of bizarre misses with both ACE and ASC (apparently there is bad blood between the ASC and former ASC member Janusz Kaminski).

Don’t Look Up and No Time to Die were each picked by six groups (the former by SAG, PGA, WGA, ACE, ADG and SCL and the latter by ACE, ADG, CAS, CDG, MPSE and MUHS), while five each went to Belfast (SAG, PGA, DGA, ACE and MPSE), Licorice Pizza (PGA, DGA, WGA, ACE and ADG) and Nightmare Alley (WGA, ADG, ASC, CDG and MPSE).

Landing four each were The French Dispatch (WGA, ACE, ADG and SCL), King Richard (SAG, PGA, WGA and ACE), Tick, Tick … Boom! (PGA, WGA, ACE and MPSE) and Cruella (ACE, ADG, CDG and MUHS), and three each were CODA (SAG, PGA and WGA), The Green Knight (ADG, CDG and SCL), House of Gucci (SAG, CDG and MUHS), In the Heights (ADG, CDG and MPSE), The Matrix Resurrections (CDG, MPSE and VES), Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (ADG, CDG and VES), Spider-Man: No Way Home (CAS, CDG and MPSE) and The Tragedy of Macbeth (ADG, ASC and MPSE).