Producers Guild nominations narrow Oscars race

pga awardThe Producers Guild of America, his published its nominees for its annual awards, including episodic TV, sports coverage, theatrical documentaries, TV competitions, among others – but all attention is falling, as usual, on those in the running for the Darryl F Zanuck Award for Outstanding Producer of Theatrical Motion Pictures – or Best Film, to you and me.

While many of the ten nominees have already featured in other awards lists, a handful are turning up for the first time. Assuming that the films appearing on the most lists are more likely to be in the running for Oscars at the end of next month, the front-runners increasingly seem to be Birdman, Boyhood and Foxcatcher, with The Grand Budapest Hotel, The Imitation Game and The Theory of Everything also in the running.

The PGA’s list also includes Gone GirlNightcrawler and Whiplash, which each have stars nominated for Screen Actors Guild awards and Clint Eastwood’s real-life Iraq War story American Sniper.

The nominees for the best documentary, released theatrically in the US last year, are The Green Prince, Life Itself, Merchants of Doubt, Particle Fever and Virunga. The animated feature nominations are The LEGO Movie, How to Train Your Dragon 2, The Boxtrolls, The Book of Life and Big Hero 6.

As well as recognition for The Imitation Game and The Theory of Everything in the film category, British talent is also well represented in the TV categories, which is unusual for awards handed out by an American trade union. Sherlock is up against Fargo, American Horror Story, The Normal Heart and The Roosevelts in the long-form TV category, while Downton Abbey is in the running for the best episodic TV drama and Armando Iannucci’s Veep is nominated in the episodic TV comedy contest.

The PGA will hand out these and other awards at a ceremony in Century City in Los Angeles on 24th January.