The Producers Guild of America on Monday announced the date for its annual awards show — January 18 in Los Angeles — marking the earliest the ceremony will have ever been held, save for 2004 when it took place on January 17.
This year’s ceremony will take place on January 20, while the 2019 is set for Saturday, January 19 at the Beverly Hilton.
The PGA is the first of the Hollywood guilds to announce its dates since the film academy’s August announcement that the Oscars would air on February 9 in 2020 (among other additions to the live show).
It’s unclear if the PGA’s sister guilds will alter their own dates, but it’s certain to make the awards-saturated month of January all the more hectic, as smaller shows compete for attention against each other and the Sundance Film Festival.
The guilds, like SAG-AFTRA and the Writers Guild of America, have a long-standing ambition to dole out their individual prizes before the Oscars, which is considered the closing event of a protracted awards season.
Another interesting battle being waged is over location. The 2020 PGA ceremony will be held at Century City’s Fairmont Hotel, the centerpiece of the new Century Plaza which is currently undergoing a $2.5 billion renovation. The PGA will bounce from the Beverly Hilton, where it held last year’s show in the International Ballroom (site of the annual Golden Globes telecast).
Century Plaza will present significant competition to Hollywood-favored spaces like the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, the Beverly Hills Hotel and the Hilton. The space will also come native with a paparazzi-proof private entrance for events, separate from the main lobby.
The list of recipients of the PGA’s honorary awards such as the Milestone Award, the David O. Selznick Achievement Award in Theatrical Motion Pictures and the Norman Lear Achievement Award in Television include contemporaries like J.J. Abrams, Jerry Bruckheimer, Steven Spielberg, Sherry Lansing, Ryan Murphy and Ava DuVernay, extending back to legends like Louis B. Mayer, Alfred Hitchcock and Billy Wilder.
Steve Pond contributed to this report.