Guillermo del Toro’s romantic fantasy The Shape Of Water took home the top prize at last evening’s 29th Producers Guild of America Awards. The film’s Best Picture win accelerates its momentum through awards season ahead of Tuesday’s Academy Awards nominations. Previously, Shape Of Water won best picture at the Critics Choice Awards and del Toro took home the Golden Globe for Best Director.
The win also positions The Shape Of Water as a potential Academy Award Best Picture winner. As a predictor for Oscar gold, the PGA has a fairly impressive track record, awarding their top prize to the film that would go on to win the Academy Award 19 times out of the last 28 years. The last two years – in which PGA winners The Big Short and LaLa Land lost out to Spotlight and Moonlight at the Academy Awards – were surprising outlier wins.
Oscar watchers know that it is quite common for the Best Director and Best Pictures Academy Awards to go to the same film, with last year’s split between LaLa Land‘s Damien Chazelle’s Best Director and Moonlight‘s Best Picture wins being the exception to that rule. And one of the best indicator for who might win the Best Director statue is, of course, the Director’s Guild Award. In the 69 year history of the DGAs, only 8 winners have not gone on to win Best Director at the Academy Awards. If del Toro takes the DGA this year, than odds are very good that both he and The Shape Of Water could be big winners at the Academy Awards. The Directors Guild Awards are awarded on February 2, 2018.
Pixars’ Coco took home the PGA Award for Best Animated Feature, upping the studio’s number of wins to seven. The PGA has had a 66% accuracy as a prognosticator for the Best Animated Feature Academy Award, with a PGA winner winning the Oscar eight times out of the twelve years that the category has existed.
