Credit: Pedro Marroquin

PGA award nominations give insight into the 2023 Oscars

Fri 13 January 2023 10:30, UK

The Producers Guild of America (PGA) award nominations have been announced, giving audiences and critics an idea of what might be nominated for Best Picture at the 95th Academy Awards.

Often providing a strong indication of what might win big at the Oscars, the PGA awards have predicted 102 of the 116 Best Picture nominees of the past 13 years. This year, their nominations for Outstanding Producer of Theatrical Motion Pictures include: Avatar: The Way of Water, The Banshees of Inisherin, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Elvis, Everything Everywhere All at Once, The Fabelmans, Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, Tár, Top Gun: Maverick and The Whale.

Whilst the inclusion of the Brendan Fraser-led drama The Whale is enough of a surprise, the list also includes four big-budget sequels, including Avatar: The Way of Water, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery and Top Gun: Maverick, with arthouse movies being left on the sidelines.

In addition, there are zero female directors included in the main category nominations, despite Charlotte Wells’s Aftersun, Maria Schrader’s She Said, Sarah Polley’s Women Talking and Gina Prince-Bythewood’s The Woman King all impressing in 2022. International features, such as Netflix’s All Quiet on the Western Front and Ruben Östlund’s Palme d’Or winner Triangle of Sadness, also fail to make the cut.

If the PGA nominations have once again managed to predict many of the Best Picture Oscar movies accurately, then the 95th Academy Awards might just be one of the most controversial iterations of recent history.

The PGA awards will be held on Saturday, February 25th. Take a look at the full list of Outstanding Producer of Theatrical Motion Pictures nominees below.