Los Angeles (AFP) - "The Banshees of Inisherin," "The Fabelmans" and "Everything Everywhere All at Once" racked up key nominations from Hollywood's actors and directors unions Wednesday, as the movie award season begins to take shape.
Coming the morning after the Golden Globes, the nominations from the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and Directors Guild of America (DGA) are seen as important stepping stones in the race to the Oscars, which take place on March 12.
"Banshees" and "Everything Everywhere" each earned five SAG nominations.Both films were short-listed for "outstanding performance by a cast," the actors' group's most prestigious award, along with "The Fabelmans."
Irish tragicomedy "Banshees" earned a lead acting nomination for Colin Farrell, just hours after his Golden Globes win.
Brendan Gleeson, Barry Keoghan and Kerry Condon were each nominated for their supporting performances as inhabitants of a tiny, beautiful but haunted Irish island in the 1920s.
Another Globe winner Michelle Yeoh, who plays an immigrant laundromat owner in "Everything Everywhere All at Once," was among the lead actress nominees.
Ke Huy Quan, Jamie Lee Curtis and Stephanie Hsu received supporting nominations for the surreal, multiverse-hopping sci-fi, which became a word-of-mouth indie smash hit last year.
The three other films nominated for best cast were "Babylon," "Women Talking" and Steven Spielberg's "Fabelmans," which won best drama at Tuesday night's Globes.
Paul Dano, essentially playing a young Steven Spielberg's father in the semi-autobiographical drama, was nominated, although his on-screen wife Michelle Williams was surprisingly overlooked by SAG.
"The Whale" also landed two nominations including for Brendan Fraser, whose comeback performance as a morbidly obese teacher has long been seen as a strong Oscar frontrunner.
Also on Wednesday, Hollywood's directors' guild revealed an all-male shortlist of five directors for its top film prize.
Spielberg, "Banshees" director Martin McDonagh and "Everything Everywhere" co-directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert were again nominated.
They were joined by Todd Field for "Tar" and Joseph Kosinski with "Top Gun: Maverick" -- although there was no place for James Cameron and his long-awaited sequel "Avatar: The Way of Water."
The 75th Annual DGA Awards take place on February 18, and the 29th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards will follow on February 26.
The SAG Awards will be live-streamed on Netflix's YouTube page, before moving to a new home on Netflix itself from 2024, it was announced Wednesday.
The announcement positions the SAG Awards to compete in an increasingly crowded and challenging awards show circuit.
Awards show ratings have fallen across the board in recent years, and the rival Globes have been rocked by scandal over their organizers' lack of diversity and alleged ethical shortcomings.
"As we begin to explore live streaming on Netflix, we look forward to partnering with SAG-AFTRA to elevate and expand this special ceremony as a global live event in 2024 and the years to come," said Netflix head of global TV Bela Bajaria.
