Oscar Experts Typing: Will the PGA Awards and Best Picture match 10 for 10 for the first time?

Welcome to Oscar Experts Typing, a weekly column in which Gold Derby editors and Experts Joyce Eng and Christopher Rosen discuss the Oscar race — via Slack, of course. This week, we discuss Best Picture in the wake of Friday’s Producers Guild Awards nominations.

Christopher Rosen: Hello, Joyce! It’s Friday and we waited for the Producers Guild Awards nominations to commence our weekly typing — perhaps expecting the industry’s producers to toss the Best Picture race into some disarray as Oscar voting ramps up. But how the taste jumped out. The 10 movies nominated for this year’s PGA Award exactly match the 10 movies we both expect to see nominated for Best Picture from A to Z  — by which I mean, the list includes “Anatomy of a Fall” and “The Zone of Interest.” This is presumably where films like “The Color Purple” and “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” should’ve gotten in to keep their fledgling Best Picture hopes alive. Now, I’m not sure I’d make any changes to my predictions before the nominations — especially because “Anatomy” and “Zone” feel like strong BAFTA plays. Joyce, is this our Best Picture field or will the academy throw a major curveball at us on Jan. 23?

joyceeng: As I slacked to you, 10/10 no notes. This will most likely be a copy/paste — and honestly, a great one. As the kids say, PGA ate with these picks. This is the consensus 10 in a lot of people’s Oscars predictions, but I think we all expected “Anatomy” and/or “Zone,” more so the latter, to be AWOL with the populist and American-centric PGA. Last year, PGA nominated “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery” and “The Whale” (#neverforget), all of which missed at the Oscars to the late-surging “All Quiet on the Western Front,” Palme d’Or champ “Triangle of Sadness” and “Women Talking,” which hung on by the skin of its teeth. In the years that PGA and the Oscars have both had fields of 10, they’ve never matched completely (I’ll be over here if you wanna talk about “The Town’s” Best Picture snub), but as Babs once said, well, the time has come. It’s kinda difficult to see any of these fall out at the Oscars. This would’ve been the spot for fringe contenders like “The Color Purple,” “Across the Spider-Verse,” “Air,” “Saltburn,” or “May December” to show up, but these 10 are proving to be just too strong. I didn’t think “Across the Spider-Verse” would get in since they didn’t nominate the first film, which was much more of a discovery and phenomenon, and the last time they touched an animated movie was 13 years ago with “Toy Story 3.” “The Color Purple’s” SAG nominations the other day probably gave some folks a glimmer of hope that it can be resuscitated after its catastrophic post-Christmas Day box office performance, but its PGA miss is actually in line with its no-shows at non-SAG guilds thus far. Plus, there’s usually at least one SAG ensemble nominee that doesn’t translate to a Best Picture nomination every year (last year was your beloved “Babylon”), and unfortunately, “The Color Purple” fits the bill. You put the musical back into your Oscar picks over the holidays in place of “Maestro,” but you’ve since reversed that. Since you’re Peak Chaos, will you stick to these 10 for the next 11 days?

SEE Experts slugfest: Breaking down the 2024 SAG Awards nominations snubs and surprises

Christopher Rosen: You know me so well. So if the PGA had gone for “The Color Purple” or “Air” (ha!), I’m sure I would’ve had the abacus out and Charlie Day memed myself into throwing “The Zone of Interest” on the snubs pile in favor of those alleged populist movies. I guess in hindsight, however, we shouldn’t be that surprised the PGA went with the Cannes duo over the other options. As we’ve said since we saw it, “Anatomy of a Fall” is as mainstream as can be, the kind of courtroom thriller and relationship drama that might’ve been a major Oscar player in the the ’90s (I can imagine the gender-flipped version with Michael Douglas in the lead role and Sydney Pollack directing). “The Zone of Interest” is ostensibly more austere, but it’s also a classic awards drama, one about the Holocaust that manages to forge new ground on a subject well covered by Hollywood over the years. If anything, these nominations today make me feel even more emboldened in other categories. For example, I was already feeling like “Anatomy” could win original screenplay, especially with the full membership voting, and now I’m even more confident in its potential there. But sticking with the PGA and Best Picture, only three films can boast top nominations from the three major guilds — “Oppenheimer,” “Barbie,” and “Killers of the Flower Moon.” Four if you wanna count “American Fiction,” which landed Cord Jefferson a first-time director nomination at the DGA Awards. The assumption remains that “Oppie” will win it all and take this PGA honor en route. Do you envision any potential upset that might derail the “Oppenheimer” train?

joyceeng: The transferrable confidence in other categories is true. We don’t need to discuss this here, but double Oscar nominee Sandra Hüller? Much to think about. “Oppenheimer” is just chugging along. It’s the only film to hit every single guild that’s announced so far (obviously helped by the fact that it’s tech-heavy, but still). At PGA, specifically, I cannot imagine it losing there. It has four-quadrant appeal, is a prestige blockbuster and is pushing toward $1 billion with its re-release today. And it was filmed on a $100 million budget in 55 days, to which Christopher Nolan cut from a planned 85 days to reallocate money to the art department. That is math producers like to hear. If one of these 10 were to fall out, though, which would it be? I’ve had “Maestro” in my 10th slot since the Bradley Cooper pic has been, uh, alienating normie viewers — separate from the Film Twitter lashings — since its Netflix arrival (which we had touched on last month). Unlike you, I never had it out because I knew the industry would like it more, but I also don’t think it inspires the same passion as something like “Anatomy” or “Zone.”

SEE Oscar Experts Typing: How big of a blow is Charles Melton’s BAFTA longlist snub?

Christopher Rosen: I definitely shouldn’t have taken “Maestro” out — I know better than to think anything said on social media equals real life — but it still felt like a movie that didn’t have a ton of passion. As we’ve seen, however, none of the other serious contenders for the 10th Best Picture spot do either. If anything, I would say “Saltburn” and “All of Us Strangers” are ahead of “The Color Purple” in terms of an upset in the final spot come Oscar nominations. But I won’t be predicting that, even though “Saltburn” is my third favorite movie of last year after “Oppenheimer” and “Barbie.” Allow me to pause here to plug my interview with Emerald Fennell as you take the last word into the weekend.

joyceeng: You can still hang on to “Saltburn” in original screenplay and hear it read aloud as a Best Picture nominee at Sunday’s Critics Choice Awards, which did not nominate “Anatomy” or “Zone.” It feels weird that this could be chalk, so I’m bracing myself for a last-second twist (“Origin” by way of Frances Fisher?). Anyway, wanna talk about “The Town” now?

Make your predictions at Gold Derby now. Download our free and easy app for Apple/iPhone devices or Android (Google Play) to compete against legions of other fans plus our experts and editors for best prediction accuracy scores. See our latest prediction champs. Can you top our esteemed leaderboards next? Always remember to keep your predictions updated because they impact our latest racetrack odds, which terrify Hollywood chiefs and stars. Don’t miss the fun. Speak up and share your huffy opinions in our famous forums where 5,000 showbiz leaders lurk every day to track latest awards buzz. Everybody wants to know: What do you think? Who do you predict and why?