The Best Picture race at the 2025 Oscars is coming into focus. The Oscars, also known as the Academy Awards, were created by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1929, and celebrate the artistic achievement of each year’s films in a variety of categories including acting, directing, editing, costume design, sound design, and more. The Oscar that is perhaps the most prestigious is the Best Picture award, which celebrates what Academy voters have deemed to be the best film of the year.
Over the years, there have been a wide variety of Best Picture winners, so far running from 1927’s Wings, a silent film starring Clara Bow, through 2023’s Oppenheimer, Christopher Nolan’s biopic-thriller of J. Robert Oppenheimer starring Cillian Murphy. Some winners are minted classics such as 1942’s Casablanca, 1964’s The Sound of Music, 1971’s The Godfather, and 1992’s Schindler’s List. However, there are also some winners that have proven to be controversial at the time or in retrospect, including 1994’s Forrest Gump, which beat Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, and 2004’s Crash, which took the top prize over Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain.
Related Why Oppenheimer Finally Won Best Picture For Christopher Nolan After He Failed With 3 Great Movies Oppenheimer officially won Best Picture at the 2024 Oscars, giving Christopher Nolan the win his other great movies could not. There are reasons why.
The PGA Nominees For Best Motion Picture Are An Early Look At The Oscars’ Best Picture Lineup
The Nominees Have A Long History Of Matching Almost Perfectly
On January 16, the remaining nominations for the 36th Producers Guild of America Awards were announced, including their own top prize, which is known as the Darryl F. Zanuck Award for Outstanding Producer of Theatrical Motion Pictures. The nominated movies are Anora, The Brutalist, Conclave, A Complete Unknown, Dune: Part Two, Emilia Pérez, A Real Pain, September 5, The Substance, and Wicked. This is a full slate, as the variable category expanded to include an upper limit of 10 nominees in 2009, around the time that the Oscars did the same, and offers insight into the upcoming 2025 Oscar nominations.
While there are shortlists available for 10 Oscar categories at the time of writing, Best Picture is not one of those categories.
The Oscar nominations, which are set to be announced on January 19, will most likely include the majority of the titles on the PGA’s list. This is shown by historical precedent, as an average of 8 out of 10 of the PGA nominations have earned Best Picture nods from the Academy since the category was expanded, though the full rosters have only matched perfectly one time. That was in 2023, when both awards bodies nominated American Fiction, Anatomy of a Fall, Barbie, The Holdovers, Killers of the Flower Moon, Maestro, Past Lives, Oppenheimer, Poor Things, and The Zone of Interest.
Having A PGA Nomination Is Crucial To Winning Best Picture
Historical Precedent Is Even Stronger Here
In addition to the majority of their nominees matching, the PGA Awards have an even stronger historical precedent for nominating the future Best Picture winner. In fact, since the PGA Awards were established in 1989, only one Best Picture winner at the Oscars did not receive a PGA nomination. That title was Mel Gibson’s 1995 historical epic Braveheart, which was snubbed in a year when the PGA’s roster only included The American President, Apollo 13 (the eventual winner), The Bridges of Madison County, Dead Man Walking, Il Postino: The Postman, Leaving Las Vegas, and Sense and Sensibility.
Apollo 13, The Postman, and Sense and Sensibility were also nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars that year, though the other nominee in that category was Babe, which did not receive a nod from the PGA Awards.
In addition to the fact that securing both nominations can increase a movie’s chances at winning Best Picture, the winner of the PGA Award has matched the Best Picture winner 25 times out of 35. This indicates that there is a strong correlation between the two awards ceremonies, though the PGA Awards has a habit of nominating some offbeat titles, particularly comedies and musicals, that receive little Oscar recognition, including the whodunit Glass Onion: A Knives Out Story, the musical Tick, Tick… Boom!, the comedy legacy sequel Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, and the romantic comedy Crazy Rich Asians.
What The PGA Nominations Mean For The 2025 Oscars Best Picture Race
They Help Clarify The Frontrunners
There are quite a few movies that have already had strong showings in the 2024-2025 season that are now increasingly likely to earn Oscar nominations for Best Picture. This includes Sean Baker’s Anora, Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist, James Mangold’s A Complete Unknown, Edward Berger’s Conclave, and Jacques Audiard’s Emilia Pérez. All of these movies have also earned Best Picture nominations at both the Golden Globes and the Critics’ Choice Awards, as well as a host of other nominations and wins, which have already shown their strong potential for earning nods from the Academy.
[The others could] potentially [be] replaced by other strong contenders from the season…
The PGA Award nominations have also strengthened the positions of Dune: Part Two, A Real Pain, September 5, The Substance, and Wicked, all of which have shown strong potential throughout the season at a variety of ceremonies. However, it is more likely that one or two of these movies will not receive a nomination at the Oscars, potentially being replaced by other strong contenders from the season, such as Sing Sing, Nickel Boys, Challengers, Gladiator II, The Room Next Door, or All We Imagine as Light.