What the SAG Nominations Mean for a Packed Best Picture Oscar Race

When the 26th annual Screen Actors Guild Awards are handed out on Jan. 19—just six days after Oscar nominations are announced—they will offer up one of the biggest harbingers for which film is best poised for gold at the Academy Awards on Feb. 9.

This year’s SAG nominations, which were announced Wednesday morning by actors America Ferrera and Danai Gurira at the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood, help to shed at least a little light on exactly which of this year’s 40-plus contending films may go the full awards distance.

Five films have now all but cemented their place in the Oscar Best Picture race with their nominations for Best Ensemble: Lionsgate’s Bombshell, Netflix’s The Irishman, Fox Searchlight’s JoJo Rabbit, Sony’s Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood, and Neon’s Parasite.

Interestingly, pundits all but predicted this exact scenario, namely the exclusion of another awards frontrunner, Netflix’s Marriage Story, because the cast is so small. But each of that movie’s key performers—Adam Driver, Scarlett Johansson, and Laura Dern—was nominated on his or her own.

The only other likely Oscar frontrunner left out of the SAG Ensemble category today is Warner Brothers’ Joker because, again, the film is driven by a small cast (essentially just SAG lead-actor nominee Joaquin Phoenix).

All-around critical favorite Parasite, the first Korean-language movie to earn a SAG Ensemble nomination, is now further propelled beyond International Feature film consideration into the Oscar Best Picture arena. And Bombshell, which failed to earn a Best Picture/Drama nomination by the Golden Globes this week, is helped greatly by its SAG Ensemble nomination as well.

Similarly with the Globes, arthouse fare like A24’s The Lighthouse and Uncut Gems, as well as Amazon’s Honey Boy weren’t part the mix today, but those films’ actors—in particular, Willem Dafoe, Adam Sandler, and Shia LaBeouf—are still considered key Oscar acting contenders.

For a full list of today’s SAG Award nominations, including for television, click here.