'The Big Short' is now the Oscar favorite after winning a Producers Guild Award

"The Big Short" won the equivalent of the Best Picture at Saturday night's Producers Guild Awards, The Darryl F. Zanuck Award for Outstanding Producer of Theatrical Motion Pictures.  Wochit Entertainment has the story in The Big Short Gets Best Picture At Producers Guild Awards.

The Hollywood Awards Season can be a rollercoaster ride. This year, there are two favorites to win Best Picture at the grand finale of awards season, the 88th Academy Awards. Both Spotlight and The Big Short have been critical and fan favorites as 2015's best film. And while general audiences may be more familiar with popular award shows such as the Critics Choice Awards, Screen Actors Guild and The Golden Globes, dedicated Oscar fans know that smaller industry awards can often predict where industry favor (And logically the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences) will fall. So when the Producers Guild gave The Big Short their top prize this weekend, it was a big hint as to how producers in the Academy will be voting. The Big Short was written and directed by the man behind Anchorman, Adam McKay. It takes a darkly comedic look at the events that led up to the 2008 financial crisis.

The Producers Guild Awards may be very obscure, but they are indeed predictive, as FiveThirtyEight points out in their guide to predicting the Oscars.

This race is the most wide open. There are many preceding awards left to go, and the field is large (eight films), which makes it hard to pick a leader. This weekend’s Producers Guild of America awards ceremony should give us a little clarity; the guild’s award for best theatrical picture is the second-most-predictive award we follow for the best picture Oscar.
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Whichever film wins at the Producers Guild awards will pick up a quarter of the remaining points and will be guaranteed front-runner status until at least February. After that, the key event to watch will be the Directors Guild of America’s top award. Any film that sweeps those two will be a strong favorite for best picture through the rest of February. If two films split them, we’ll have a serious race on our hands.

Based on its victory this past weekend, "The Big Short" is now in the lead over "Spotlight," which had been in first place because of its Best Picture win at the Critics Choice Awards.  The bettors at PredictWise now have "The Big Short" as the favorite at 43% with "Spotlight" second at 31% and "The Revenant" in third at 19%.  The rest are in the low single digits.  "Spotlight" is no longer the prohibitive favorite; instead, we have a contest!