The Producers Guild of America is the only set of awards chosen entirely by producers. Typically, they have different goals when choosing films, success among them. However, they do try their best to forecast the Oscars and will often go for an acclaimed film even if it wasn’t a box office behemoth.

Here are our predictions on who we think will win for Best Picture, Best Animated Feature and Best Documentary. Our contributors commentary is included along with their predictions.

PRODUCERS GUILD OF AMERICA AWARDS

Best Picture

The Big Short (RU:Tripp)
Bridge of Spies
Brooklyn
Ex Machina
Mad Max: Fury Road
The Martian
The Revenant (RU:Wesley, RU:Peter, RU:Thomas)
Sicario
Spotlight (Wesley, Peter, Tripp, Thomas)
Straight Outta Compton

Wesley Lovell: I’m going with the current leader of the Best Picture precursor race, though the PGA loves successful films, which could be a boon for something like The Revenant, which is doing excellent business at the box office. Then again, The Martian, Mad Max: Fury Road and Straight Outta Compton also did quite well.
Peter J. Patrick: This could conceivably go to one of four films, with The Big Short, The Revenant and Max Max: Fury Road also possible, but I’ll go with my gut and predict my personal choice of Spotlight.
Tripp Burton: I have to admit: I have no idea what is going to happen here. What I do know is that no film has won Best Picture at the Oscars without this award since 2006, so this should tell us a lot about what will happen on Oscar Night. If The Revenant is going to make a push for the Oscar, it absolutely needs to win here, but I don’t think that will happen. Instead, like the Oscars, I think this will end up being between Spotlight and The Big Short, with the question being whether the PGA will acknowledge the bigger Hollywood fare or the smaller, independent fare. Then there’s Mad Max: Fury Road, which does seem the most “produced” of all of these, but I think that its days of winning prizes may be coming to a close.
Thomas LaTourette: This is a difficult category to predict. The PGA has not been around long enough for me to be sure of trends in their awards. The Martian has the best box office of the bunch, but The Revenant is currently doing well in theaters. However, The Revenant may also have opened too recently for them to realize how well it would do. Mad Max: Fury Road probably had the best return for what the movie cost, but I don’t know if they consider that. Spotlight would be a safe choice, a well reviewed movie that did reasonable box office. It would really surprise me if any of the other six nominated films come anywhere close to winning, though a case might be made for The Big Short. That said, I still find it hard to choose both a winner and a runner up with any certainty. I will predict Spotlight to win, but it could be easily upset. The most likely film to pull the upset would be The Revenant which is in theaters and doing well. It will be interesting to see how it goes.

Best Animated Feature

Anomalisa (RU:Wesley, RU:Peter)
The Good Dinosaur
Inside Out (Wesley, Peter, Tripp, Thomas)
Minions (RU:Thomas)
The Peanuts Movie (RU:Tripp)

Wesley Lovell: There’s really no other potential winner and picking a runner-up is difficult, but I went with the other critically acclaimed film of the bunch.
Peter J. Patrick: No commentary.
Tripp Burton: Pixar has 5 of the 10 awards the PGA has ever given out for Animated Feature, but it also hasn’t won one since 2010. They do like their big Hollywood cartoons, though, so Inside Out should bring Pixar back into the mix once again.
Thomas LaTourette: The PGA does like a box office winner, and Inside Out had the biggest box office of any of the nominees. It should easily take the award. If there is an upset, I don’t think it would be the critical success of Anomalisa that does it, but the box office of Minions that might sway them, which had the second best box office record to Inside Out. However, it is difficult to imagine any film but Inside Out triumphing here.

Best Documentary

Amy (Wesley, Tripp, Thomas, RU:Peter)
The Hunting Ground (RU:Tripp)
The Look of Silence (Peter, RU:Thomas)
Meru (RU:Wesley)
Something Better to Come

Wesley Lovell: Amy is picking up everything in sight. I don’t see a reason for it to lose now. Meru seems to be the documentary that has hung in there the best and I think it’s filming difficulty and strength of production could give it an edge to upset.
Peter J. Patrick: No commentary.
Tripp Burton: Amy seems to be the frontrunner for the major Documentary prizes for the rest of the season, and I imagine this will kick things off. It is an audience-friendly documentary about the entertainment business that also plays very frankly, very emotionally, and very passionately. If voters really take their time to check out all the nominees, though, they may also be drawn to the more timely The Hunting Ground or the overwhelmingly impressive Meru.
Thomas LaTourette: Amy was both well received and did reasonably well at the box office, so it should triumph here. It is hard to imagine an upset, but if a film were to do that it might be the critically acclaimed The Look of Silence.