The Hollywood guilds wound up their nominations with a blitz of announcements this week, culminating in Thursday’s slates of nominees from the Producers Guild, Writers Guild, Directors Guild and American Cinema Editors. And now we can compile some statistics from the movies of 2021 – not the films that have received awards from critics’ groups or the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, but ones that have been recognized by the kind of film professionals who will also be voting for the Academy Awards.
(The guild nominations ended, not coincidentally, on the day that Oscar nomination voting began.)
The guilds and professional organizations we’re considering are the Screen Actors Guild (SAG), the Directors Guild (DGA), the Producers Guild (PGA), the Writers Guild (WGA), the American Cinema Editors (ACE), the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC), the Art Directors Guild (ADG), the Costume Designers Guild (CDG), the Cinema Audio Society (CAS), the Motion Picture Sound Editors (MPSE), the Make-Up Artists and Hair Stylists Guild (MUAHS), the Society of Composers and Lyricists (SCL) and the Visual Effects Society (VES).
Unsurprisingly, given that most of the nominations are made by below-the-line guilds, Denis Villeneuve’s sci-fi epic “Dune” got the most nominations, 12. It was recognized by every one of the groups except SAG. “West Side Story” followed with nine nominations. “The Power of the Dog” and “Don’t Look Up” got eight, “Nightmare Alley” got seven and “Belfast” got six.
Two films, “West Side Story” and “Licorice Pizza,” were nominated by all four of the major guilds – SAG, DGA, PGA and WGA – but neither of them secured the important SAG ensemble award. Two others, “Belfast” and “The Power of the Dog,” were nominated by SAG, DGA and PGA, but weren’t eligible for WGA nominations because of that guild’s more restrictive qualifying rules.
Here’s a list of nominations restricted to films that have been nominated by at least one of the major guilds. (For the Directors Guild, we stuck to the feature-directing category and did not include the first-time director category.)
12 nominations:
“Dune”: DGA, PGA, WGA, ACE, ASC, ADG, CAS. CDG, MPSE, MUAHS, SCL, VES
9 nominations:
“West Side Story”: SAG, DGA, PGA, WGA, ADG, CAS, CDG, MPSE, MUAHS
8 nominations:
“Don’t Look Up”: SAG (ensemble), PGA, WGA, ACE, ADG, CDG, MUAHS, SCL
“The Power of the Dog”: SAG, DGA, PGA, ACE, ASC, CAS, MPSE, SCL
7 nominations:
“Nightmare Alley”: SAG, WGA, ASC, ADG, CDG, MPSE, VES
6 nominations:
“Belfast”: SAG (ensemble), DGA, PGA, ACE, ASC, MPSE
“Licorice Pizza”: SAG, DGA, PGA, WGA, ACE, ADG
5 nominations:
“tick, tick…BOOM!”: SAG, PGA, WGA, ACE, MPSE
“The Tragedy of Macbeth”: SAG, ASC, ADG, MPSE, VES
4 nominations:
“Being the Ricardos”: SAG, PGA, WGA, MUAHS
“The French Dispatch”: WGA, ACE, ADG, SCL
“King Richard”: SAG (ensemble), PGA, WGA, ACE
3 nominations:
“CODA”: SAG (ensemble), PGA, WGA
“House of Gucci”: SAG (ensemble), CDG, MUAHS
2 nominations:
“The Eyes of Tammy Faye”: SAG, MUAHS
“The Lost Daughter”: SAG, ADG
“Respect”: SAG, SCL
1 nomination:
“Passing”: SAG
“The Tender Bar”: SAG
And here are some notable films that received multiple nominations but were not singled out by SAG, DGA, PGA or WGA:
8 nominations:
“No Time to Die”: ACE, ADG, CAS, CDG, MPSE, MUAHS, SCL, VES
4 nominations:
“Cruella”: ACE, ADG, CDG, MUAHS
“The Matrix Resurrections”: CDG, MPSE, MUAHS, VES
“Spider-Man: No Way Home”: CAS, CDG, MPSE, VES
3 nominations:
“The Green Knight”: ADG, CDG, SCL
“Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings”: ADG, CDG, VES