LOS ANGELES – There is simply no stopping Oppenheimer.
On Feb 25, the Producers Guild of America (PGA) gave its top film award to Christopher Nolan’s 2023 blockbuster biopic about the father of the atomic bomb, completing a clean sweep of major industry prizes that suggests Oppenheimer will cruise to a best picture victory at the Oscars on March 10.
“We have never won this before,” Nolan, 53, noted in his acceptance speech. The PGA had previously nominated his films Dunkirk (2017), Inception (2010) and The Dark Knight (2008).
The British director, who produced Oppenheimer with his wife Emma Thomas and American producer Charles Roven, continued: “Every time we found ourselves invited into this room, we felt such support for whatever leaps we have taken or whatever risks we have taken from a group of people who understand how difficult it is to get anything made.”
The PGA Awards are often considered a dry run for the Oscars’ best picture race, since the guild shares significant member overlap with the academy and uses the same preferential ballot to pick its winner.
The 2024 PGA nominees matched exactly the Oscar best picture list.
Since 2009, when both groups expanded the number of best film nominees from five, the PGA winner has repeated at the Oscars all but three times.
Can Oppenheimer be beaten? The only film to take top prizes from the producers, directors and actors’ guilds – as Oppenheimer has done – and still lose the best picture Oscar is Apollo 13 (1995).
Nolan’s film is far better situated than Apollo 13, with two possible acting wins for stars Cillian Murphy and Robert Downey Jr.
So, the question now is not whether Oppenheimer will triumph at the Oscars, but how many statuettes it will earn before taking the top prize.
Elsewhere at the PGA Awards, which were held at the Ray Dolby Ballroom in Hollywood, the documentary prize went to American Symphony (2023), while Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse (2023) was named best animated film.
The top TV prizes went to season-long sweepers, with Succession (2018 to 2023) winning best episodic drama. The Bear (2022 to present) was named the best episodic comedy, while Beef (2023) won best limited series. NYTIMES
