“The Bear” and “Spider-Man Across the Spider-Verse” were among the early winners, with producers Charles D. King and Gail Berman at the 35th Annual Producers Guild Awards Sunday night. received the Career Achievement Award.
Hulu's cooking comedy “The Bear” swept every category at Saturday's Screen Actors Guild Awards, and did the same at January's Emmy Awards, winning Best Producer for Comic Episode Television.
“Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse'' won the PGA Award for Best Animated Film. The film has been nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, which will be announced in two weeks. His previous film, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, won the PGA Award in 2019 and later went on to win an Oscar.
The PGA Awards, held for the first time this year at the Ray Dolby Ballroom on the same grounds as the Academy Awards, proved to be one of the best predictors of what would win the best Oscar, and ultimately An award will be given. It has won Best Picture in four of the past five years, including last year's “Everything, Everywhere All at Once.”
The awards season steamroller Oppenheimer is one of the contenders for the PGA's top award, which will be presented late Sunday night. Martin Scorsese is also expected to receive the David O. Selznick Lifetime Achievement Award later in the show.
Prior to this, Mr. King became the first African-American to receive the PGA's Milestone Award, which honors historic contributions to the film industry. Previous winners of this award since 1951 include Walt Disney, Clint Eastwood, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas.
King was praised for quitting his job as a Hollywood agent in 2015 to found MACRO, a media company dedicated to amplifying the voices of Black artists and other people of color.
The company has produced films such as 2016's “Fences,” starring Denzel Washington and Viola Davis (who won an Oscar for the role), and 2021's “Judas and the Black Messiah,” for which Dr. King himself was nominated for an Oscar as a producer. has produced movies.
Dr. King thanked “my ancestors for kicking down doors, making sacrifices, and paving the way for me to do the things I've been blessed to do.”
Berman is the only woman to hold top positions at both a major film company and a television network, and was awarded the Norman Lear Award for Achievement in Television. Berman is the driving force behind the production and broadcast of “Buffy the Vampire: The Slayer,'' starring Sarah Michelle, whose Geller presented her with the award.
“Nobody on this planet was interested in buying that TV show,” Berman said. “But we couldn't ignore our intuition that there was something unique there.”
Berman is also a producer on Netflix's “Wednesdays” and the 2022 biopic “Elvis.”
Netflix's “BEEF” won the PGA Award for Best Limited Series, “Last Week Tonight With John Oliver” won Best Variety and “American Symphony” won Best Documentary.
During the show, the PGA announced an initiative to provide medical insurance to member producers who are otherwise uninsured. Members of the Actors and Writers Guild have long relied on their unions for health insurance.
“Producers deserve coverage,” said PGA Co-President Stephanie Alleyne.
The effort includes asking production companies, including major studios and streamers, to include contributions to producers' health insurance in their production budgets.
Film companies Blumhouse, Legendary, Berlanti Productions and King's Macro have already signed on.