‘Nomadland’ still has plenty of gas left in its tank.
The Frances McDormand road drama won the top prize from the Producers Guild of America on Wednesday night, adding another high-profile trophy to a shelf that already includes the Golden Globe for best drama and the Critics Choice Award for best picture.
Though ‘Nomadland’ was already considered by most to be the Oscar front-runner, the PGA Award offers an excellent field test of how the film can fare in a group that contains a significant number of Oscar voters and uses a similar preferential ballot. Since 2009, when the guild and Oscars both expanded the number of their best-film nominees, the two groups have differed only three times in their ultimate selection.
Still, one of those variances was just one year ago, when the guild chose the war epic ‘1917’ and the Oscars instead went for ‘Parasite.’
Though “Nomadland” has had the strongest awards-season run so far, its guild dominance is not absolute. At last weekend’s Writers Guild Awards, where ‘Nomadland’ was deemed ineligible, the winners were ‘Borat Subsequent Moviefilm’ for adapted screenplay and ‘Promising Young Woman’ for original screenplay.
And while McDormand is nominated for a best-actress Screen Actors Guild Award, ‘Nomadland’ failed to earn a top SAG nomination for best cast. Those awards, which will be held April 4, could give a shot in the arm to best-picture nominees ‘Minari’ and ‘The Trial of the Chicago 7,’ whose ensembles did manage to score nominations.
Elsewhere at the PGA Awards, ‘My Octopus Teacher’ took the guild’s documentary-film honour, while ‘Soul’ was deemed the best animated film. ‘The Crown’ (best episodic drama), ‘Schitt’s Creek’ (best episodic comedy) and ‘The Queen’s Gambit’ (best limited series) won the top TV prizes.
