“Oppenheimer,” Christopher Nolan’s biographical thriller on the career of renowned physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, is racking up top film awards just weeks before the Academy Awards. At the 30th annual Screen Actors Guild Awards on Feb. 24, the film bested four fellow nominees — Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie,” Cord Jefferson’s “American Fiction,” Blitz Bazawule’s “The Color Purple” and Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon” — to win the marquee best cast in a motion picture award. The following night, at the Producers Guild of America Awards, the film took home yet another top prize, the PGA’s Darryl F. Zanuck Award for outstanding producer of theatrical motion pictures.
The Zanuck Award winner has also won the best picture Oscar for five of the past six years, including last year with the Daniels’ hit absurdist comedy-drama “Everything, Everywhere All at Once.”
“Oppenheimer” leads this year’s Oscar nominations with 13 total nods. It is currently the projected winner in the best picture category, which also includes “American Fiction,” “Anatomy of a Fall,” “Barbie,” “The Holdivers,” “Killers of the Flower Moon,” “Maestro,” “Past Lives,” “Poor Things” and “The Zone of Interest.”
“Oppenheimer” also celebrated wins at the Golden Globes and Directors Guild Awards. During Sunday’s showcase, Nolan thanked his fellow producer Charles Royen for giving him “American Prometheus,” the book that inspired “Oppenheimer,” and “starting a chain reaction that’s spread all over the world.” Robert Downey Jr., who plays Lewis Strauss in the film, also called it “the highest-grossing film about theoretical physics yet made.”
