‘American Sniper’ was among films cited by the PGA

Nominations for the best in film for 2014 by the Producers Guild of America (PGA) were announced Monday morning, offering a mixture of expected and surprising results. Established in 1990, the PGA Awards historically align fairly well with the Academy due to strong crossover in membership and similar ways in voting, so anyone who wants to get a leg up in forming Oscar predictions should look at the PGA mentions closely. As expected, films like Boyhood, Birdman, The Imitation Game, and The Theory of Everything continued their season dominance and were included in the line-up; all four films seem poised to crack Oscar’s Best Picture race barring some unforeseen craziness ahead. The Grand Budapest Hotel and Gone Girl also received nods, with both making strides to not be forgotten in the busy season. The rest of the field however, comes with more questions for where this season may go.

American Sniper and Nightcrawler, two films seemingly on the outside looking in, were both included on the PGA’s best-of-the-year line-up, making them real threats for Best Picture slots at the Oscars. Both films also earned nods from the American Cinema Editors and Art Directors Guild in recent days. Neither film should be thought of as a sure thing to move onward to the Oscars however. Sniper, while hitting with the guilds so far and doing bang-up business in limited release, has to fight mixed reviews and may struggle with the slightly more artistically-driven (and perhaps more liberal) bias of the members of the Academy (PGA has a broader, on paper more mainstream membership). Nightcrawler, while critically acclaimed, is still a dark mood piece that may not click with everybody. The same may be true for the PGA- approved Foxcatcher, which has had an up-and-down awards cycle since premiering to strong reviews at the Cannes Film Festival last spring – the chilly drama s may resonate with as many voters as it alienates. Then there’s Whiplash, which got a welcome boost this morning, hoping to contend as this year’s little indie-that-could.

The most curious omission from the PGA field is Ava DuVernay’s Selma, the fact-based drama about the 1965 marches led by Martin Luther King Jr that led to the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The critically acclaimed film appears to be fully within the wheelhouse of something the PGA would embrace with its stirring but accessible recount of an important time in not-too recent history. That late-breaking film may have lost a bit of favor with PGA because distributor Paramount Pictures didn’t send screeners out, marking an obstacle (but not one impossible to overcome) for the film’s road to Oscars. Also missing from the list was Unbroken – curiously, the other big awards movie directed by a female, in this case Angelina Jolie. Other awards outliers missing from the list include National Board of Review winner A Most Violent Year, Into the Woods, and Interstellar – all films that really needed a PGA mention for a serious chance to become Best Picture Oscar nominees.

Last year, the PGA pulled quite the shocker when they named both 12 Years a Slave and Gravity their best film of the year. The Producers Guild will announce their winners on January 24, 2015. A full list of the nominees is below:

OUTSTANDING PRODUCER (Motion Picture)

• American Sniper– Bradley Cooper, Clint Eastwood, Andrew Lazar, Robert Lorenz, Peter Morgan
• Birdman– Alejandro G. Iñárritu, John Lesher, James W. Skotchdopole
• Boyhood– Richard Linklater, Cathleen Sutherland
• Foxcatcher– Megan Ellison, Jon Kilik, Bennett Miller
• Gone Girl– Ceán Chaffin
• The Grand Budapest Hotel– Wes Anderson, Scott Rudin, Jeremy Dawson, Steven Rales
• The Imitation Game– Nora Grossman, Ido Ostrowsky, Teddy Schwarzman
• Nightcrawler– Jennifer Fox, Tony Gilroy
• The Theory of Everything– Tim Beaven, Eric Fellner, Lisa Bruce, Anthony McCarten
• Whiplash– Jason Blum, Helen Estabrook, David Lancaster

OUTSTANDING PRODUCER (Animated Feature)

• Big Hero 6– Roy Conli
• The Book of Life– Brad Booker, Guillermo Del Toro
• The Boxtrolls– David Bleiman Ichioka, Travis Knight
• How to Train Your Dragon 2– Bonnie Arnold
• The LEGO Movie– Dan Lin

OUTSTANDING PRODUCER (Documentary Feature)

• The Green Prince– John Battsek, Simon Chinn, Nadav Chirman
• Life Itself– Garrett Basch, Steve James, Zak Piper
• Merchants of Doubt– Robert Kenner, Melissa Robledo
• Particle Fever– David E. Kaplan, Mark A Levinson, Andrea Miller, Carla Solomon
• Virunga– Joanna Natasegara, Orlando von Einsiedel