Add another one to the “Everything Everywhere All at Once” trophy shelf (and slap some googly eyes on it, too).
The Producers Guild of America handed its best film award on Saturday night to the sci-fi hit about a Chinese American laundromat owner’s unlikely quest to save the multiverse, extending the film’s award-season momentum after a big win at last weekend’s Directors Guild ceremony.
The producer Jonathan Wang took the stage flanked by his cast, including Oscar nominees Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan, Stephanie Hsu and Jamie Lee Curtis, and the film’s directors, Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert. Wang spoke movingly about his feeling of never fitting in as a mixed-race child.
“When I was with my Chinese family, I never felt really Chinese, and with my white family, I never really felt white,” Wang said. “But in this room with all you other nominees, you shouldn’t have accepted me, you shouldn’t have welcomed me in, but I feel like family in this room with you producers.”
There is no stronger best-picture bellwether than the PGA Awards, which are voted on by a guild that shares significant member overlap with the academy. Since 2009, when both groups adopted a preferential ballot and expanded the number of best film nominees from five, the PGA winner has repeated at the Oscars all but three times. Last year, when the Producers Guild opted for “CODA” over the Directors Guild winner “The Power of the Dog,” it offered the strongest evidence that the family dramedy was on a path to Oscar’s top prize. And of the last 15 films to win both the PGA and DGA prizes, 11 went on to win the best picture Oscar.
Inside the World of ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’
In this mind-expanding, idiosyncratic take on the superhero film, a laundromat owner is the focus of a grand, multiversal showdown.
- Review: Our film critic called “Everything Everywhere All at Once” an exuberant swirl of genre anarchy.
- The Protagonist: Over the years, Michelle Yeoh has built her image as a combat expert. For this movie, she drew on her emotional reserves.
- A Lovelorn Romantic: An ‘80s child star, Ke Huy Quan returns to acting as the husband of Yeoh’s character, a role blending action and drama.
- A Side Dish of Nothing: Two of the most talked-about movies of 2022, “Everything Everywhere” and “Glass Onion,” delve into nihilism through conceptual foodstuffs. What they do next is surprising.
With two significant guild prizes in its pocket, “Everything Everywhere” is heavily favored to triumph at both the Screen Actors Guild Awards on Sunday night and the Writers Guild Awards next weekend. That would be an auspicious clean sweep: In the last 28 years, no film has won the best picture Oscar without first taking a top prize from at least one of Hollywood’s four major guilds.
Is the final race decided, then? Well, it’s worth noting that “Everything Everywhere” got a cold shoulder last weekend at the BAFTAs, prizes that are handed out by the British academy, which also shares members with the American academy: Despite 10 BAFTA nominations, “Everything” won only an editing prize, and even season-long sweeper Ke Huy Quan lost the supporting-actor trophy to “The Banshees of Inisherin” star Barry Keoghan. BAFTA gave its best film award to Netflix’s “All Quiet on the Western Front,” though it will be difficult for that war movie to build dark-horse momentum over the coming weeks, as it was not nominated for the SAG, WGA, or Independent Spirit Awards.
Elsewhere at the PGA Awards, the documentary film prize went to “Navalny,” while “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio” was named the best animated film. The top TV awards went to “The White Lotus” (best episodic drama), “The Bear” (best episodic comedy) and “The Dropout” (best limited series).
Here’s the complete list of winners:
Film
Best Film: “Everything Everywhere All at Once”
Animated Feature: “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio”
Documentary: “Navalny”
David O. Selznick Award: Tom Cruise
Stanley Kramer Award: “Till”
Milestone Award: Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy
Television
Episodic Drama: “The White Lotus”
Episodic Comedy: “The Bear”
Limited Anthology Series: “The Dropout”
Television Movie: “Weird: The Al Yankovic Story”
Nonfiction Television: “Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy”
Live, Variety, Sketch, Standup and Talk Show: “Last Week Tonight With John Oliver”
Game and Competition Television: “Lizzo’s Watch Out for the Big Grrrls”
Sports Program: “Tony Hawk: Until the Wheels Come Off”
Children’s Program: “Sesame Street”
Short-Form Program: “Only Murders in the Building: One Killer Question”
PGA Innovation Award: “Stay Alive, My Son”
Norman Lear Achievement Award: Mindy Kaling
