Producers Guild Nominations

The only surprising thing about the Producers Guild nominations today was that it came one day earlier than expected. The nominated films themselves, with the exception of a not-even-that-shocking inclusion of James Bond, are the same films that have been Oscar front-runners since the beginning of awards season.

Producer of the Year Award in Films

• Argo
• Beasts of the Southern Wild
• Django Unchained
• Les Misérables
• Life of Pi
• Lincoln
• Moonrise Kingdom
• Silver Linings Playbook
• Skyfall
• Zero Dark Thirty

As I said above, only Skyfall was the odd man out and yet there was always going to be one crowd-pleaser in the mix and this year the honor went to the first billion dollar grossing James Bond film. I wished it would've been The Avengers, while others thought it would've been The Dark Knight Rises. Unfortunately for those films, the other 9 films have dominated the awards season (all of them were nominated by the BFCA and both the National Board of Review and the Hollywood Foreign Press cited 8 of the 9 films). The possibility of these same 9 films to be nominated for Best Picture became that much likelier. The biggest loser here, of course, is The Master, but its fans should note that Oscar rarely goes 100% with the guild. Look at the similarly auteur-driven Tree of Life last year.

Producer of the Year Award in Animated Films

• Brave
• Frankenweenie
• ParaNorman
• Rise of the Guardians
• Wreck-It Ralph

Like the live-action films above, this list was populated with the same exact films honored elsewhere. In fact, only one animated film not on this list has won a critics award and it was a film that was already Oscar-nominated last year. All of these films were nominated for a BFCA and only ParaNorman, the critical favorite, didn't get a Golden Globe nomination. At this point, I'd be quite shocked to see any of these films left out for the eventual Oscar short list.

Producer of the Year Award in Documentaries

• The Gatekeepers
• The Island President
• The Other Dream Team
• A People Uncounted
• Searching for Sugar Man

Only Searching for Sugar Man and The Gatekeepers are still in the running for Oscar glory and not shockingly they are also the only two films in this list to get any awards attention elsewhere with Sugar Man out in front with the most critics awards, a win from the National Board of Review, and a BFCA nomination. Is it the front-runner then? It's very hard to tell this year with this category, so stay tuned!