The race to win the Academy Award for best picture next month has considerably narrowed.
World War I film ‘1917’ won the award for best picture at the Producers Guild of America (PGA) Awards on Saturday, becoming the clear frontrunner to win the same award at the Oscars on February 9. The win continues a hot streak for the film, which earlier this month won the Golden Globe award for best drama film, and followed that up with several big victories at the Critics Choice Awards.
Its director, Sam Mendes, is the also favourite to win the top award at next week’s Directors Guild of America Awards.
Established in 1990, the PGA Awards have long been one of the primary bellwethers for the Oscars. Of the 30 films to win its award for best film (prior to 1917 this year), 21 of them went on to win the top prize at the Oscars. The PGA is comprised of more than 7,000 film and television producers from around the world.
And in the 10 years since the Oscars changed to a preferential ballot (the same system the PGA Awards employ), eight of its best picture winners were also that year’s PGA winner. Under that system, voters rank all of the best picture nominees from best to worst. If no film is ranked first on more than 50 percent of the ballots, the film with the fewest votes for the top spot is removed from consideration, and those ballots are redistributed to the films that they ranked second. This process continues until one film has more than 50 percent of the ballots on its pile.
Preferential voting tends to reward films that are widely liked - if not necessarily loved -while penalizing the more polarizing films. That’s good news for ‘1917’, and bad news for ‘Joker’.
‘1917’ now has the best odds to win the Oscar for best picture, according to nearly every betting site. But ‘Parasite’ and ‘Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’ are not out of the race just yet. Quartz
Add new comment