Saturday night was the biggest night heading into the Oscars with the PGA, DGA, and Annie Awards awarding their awards winners.

While the guild award winners are not necessarily a guarantee to repeat their win on Oscar Sunday, two films look to be sitting comfortably after this weekend: Anora and The Wild Robot. Sean Baker has also boosted his chance to take home his first Oscar win. Because of the fires, Anora could potentially win big on Oscar Sunday and still not end its awards run that evening because the ACE Eddie Awards will not take place until a few weeks later.

Let’s talk about Anora. If I’m being honest, it’s a good film but it didn’t even make it into my top 15 films of the year. In any event, it won Best Picture at the Critics Choice Awards on Friday night prior to sweeping both DGA and PGA on Saturday night. What’s so interesting is how I heard so much talk about The Brutalist being the frontrunner during the past few weeks. This is probably because of its Golden Globes win and the show has yet to earn back any trust or credibility.

The main difference between the DGA Awards and the Oscars is that Conclave‘s Edward Berger is not nominated. Replacing him in the slot is The Substance‘s Coralie Fargeat. Will The Substance being nominated make much of a difference? Doubtful. DGA is a really good prognosticator of who will win the Oscar for Best Director. There have only been 8 times in which the two didn’t match up since the first DGA Awards were held in 1949. In three of these instances, the DGA winner was not nominated for an Oscar (1985, 1995, 2012). The last time that the Oscars didn’t match up with DGA was when Bong Joon-ho won over Sam Mendes.

Much like DGA, the PGA is also a great prognosticator. They haven’t been around as long as other awards shows as their first awards were held in 1990, honoring the best of 1989. But since this time, they’ve been correct for all but ten times. Like with DGA, the last time they were wrong was when Parasite beat out 1917. There are some differences between the Oscar and PGA nominations for Best Picture. The Oscars replaced A Real Pain and September 5 with I’m Still Here and Nickel Boys. Will this make much of a difference? I hardly doubt it. Unless another film surges and surprises, it’ll be a great night for Sean Baker and Anora.

I have no regrets about choosing The Wild Robot over seeing Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis in September. The animated swept every category in which it was nominated during the Annie Awards. It was clearly the best film, having been awarded a Solzy Award in December, too. That being said, it is competing against Flow during the upcoming Oscars for Best Animated Feature. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse swept seven categories during the Annie Awards last year, only to lose to The Boy and the Heron at the Oscars. While The Wild Robot is sitting in a very good position, there’s still no guarantee that the Academy will crown it the winner.

Filmmaker Chris Sanders has never previously won an Oscar. He’s been nominated three times in the past for Lilo and Stitch, How to Train Your Dragon, and The Croods. Will this year be the year in which the Academy propels him to the top? It looks that way but we’ll have to wait and see. As previous years have shown, the Academy does not always match up with the Annie Awards winners.

Final Oscars voting will take place February 11-18, 2025, but March 2 cannot get here soon enough.

The 97th Oscars will be held on Sunday, March 2, 2025, at the Dolby Theatre at Ovation Hollywood and will be televised live on ABC and in more than 200 territories worldwide.

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