Bowen Yang and Rachel Sennott were very professional as they read off the Oscar nominations — Charli XCX only came up once, for example. But then they arrived at the Best Picture nominations, where half of them went to “Nominees to Be Determined”: The Brutalist, Emilia Pérez, I’m Still Here, Nickel Boys, and The Substance. “Guys,” Sennott joked in response. “Paperwork. Let’s go.”
The rules for who gets nominated as a producer at the Oscars are pretty strict: no more than three people and you’ve got to have a screen credit of “producer” or “produced by.” No films for the past three years have had a TBD credit when nominated for Best Picture. “’Producer’ is a nebulous job title, and movies often have a number of credited producers,” Vulture’s resident Oscar expert Nate Jones explains. “To figure out which ones get the Oscar, the Academy goes by the Producers Guild’s eligibility standard, which stipulates that the nominees should be the ones who ‘performed a majority of the producing functions on a specific motion picture in a decision-making capacity.’ However, since this is a subjective decision, producers can appeal.”
The Notice of Producing Form deadline for the Producers Guild Awards was October 11 — though there are sometimes panels created to determine eligibility for their awards, which happen after that deadline. Of the five, three are nominated at the PGAs (The Brutalist, The Substance, and Emilia Pérez). “The Oscar rules say that producers who ‘have successfully appealed the Producers Guild of America’s refusal of such eligibility’ can be nominated, so the likely guess is that all the films with TBD nominees have pending appeals that will be settled before the ceremony.” Paperwork! Let’s go!