The Producers Guild and Writers Guild both liked all the same movies everyone else did

By Sean O'Neal | January 4, 2011 | 8:16pm

Aux Features Film

The Producers Guild of America and the Writers Guild of America—easily the two most powerful guilds in America that do not involve collecting Moon Silver Sand points—have announced their respective nominations for this year’s upcoming awards, and anyone who’s been paying attention to the slow drip of end-of-year accolades can probably guess which of 2010’s films were recognized. Last year’s PGA nominees accurately predicted eight of the eventual 10 nominees for Best Picture at the Academy Awards, which is probably good, if somewhat superfluous news for presumed Oscar favorites The Social Network, The King’s Speech, The Kids Are All Right, Black Swan, 127 Hours, The Fighter, and Inception. There was some snubbing going on in the omission of Winter’s Bone, which failed to make the list; instead, the PGA paid tribute to seeming underdogs True Grit and The Town, while also nominating Toy Story 3 for both Outstanding Feature and Outstanding Animated Feature, which should make Disney happy. Good, because no one likes a sad Disney.

The WGA nominations may come as some surprise to Aaron Sorkin, who railed against the organization during a recent roundtable in front of its West Coast president John Wells and sort-of jokingly declared, “I now will not get a WGA nomination; we can rule that out.” Probably to prove the WGA is the bigger guild, it went ahead and nominated Sorkin anyway, and they might even give it to him, just to see the look on his face. And since The King’s Speech, Toy Story 3, and Winter’s Bone were ruled ineligible for recognition because they did not meet the guild’s strict guidelines (for either not being produced under the union’s jurisdiction or not being “formally submitted” for consideration, presumably by a tuxedoed man-servant), a couple of unexpected films squeaked in, namely Please Give and I Love You Phillip Morris. Here are the full lists of nominees from each organization: