GRAVITY And 12 YEARS A SLAVE Tie At Producers Guild Awards

In an historical moment, both Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity and Steve McQueen’s 12 Years A Slave won the same number of votes for Outstanding Picture at the annual Producers Guild Awards last night. It was the first time that there was a tie for the top honor since the awards were first handed out in 1989.

The WikiLeaks/Eric Snowden story We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks won the award for Oustanding Documentary Production while Frozen won Outstanding Animated Theatrical Motion Picture.

In addition to being the first tie in the award’s history, last night’s dual win was also an upset for the many who thought that David O. Russell’s American Hustle was destined to take home the prize.

If you play your Academy Award predictions based on the odds of the various guild award winners also grabbing Oscar gold, than you know that the Producers Guild Award winner usually nabs the Academy’s Best Picture prize about 71% of the time. But given that the Oscar for Best Picture and Best Director frequently go hand-in-hand and the Directors Guild Award has only gone to a different winner than the Best Director Oscar five times in the last 30 years, it looks like we will be have to wait until Saturday when the DGA’s are announced to get a more firm grip as to who the Oscar favorite will be.