Little Miss Sunshine was the surprise feature-film winner at the 2007 Producers Guild Awards.
The (superficially) offbeat family comedy directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, and written by Michael Arndt has also been nominated for the Directors Guild Award and for the Screen Actors Guild Award for best ensemble, which includes Alan Arkin, Greg Kinnear, Toni Collette, Steve Carell, and Abigail Breslin (above, in red).
Five individuals — Marc Turtletaub, David T. Friendly, Peter Saraf, Albert Berger, and Ron Yerxa – were considered the official producers of the film. That will probably give the Academy some grief when Little Miss Sunshine receives its inevitable Oscar nomination for best picture next Tuesday. Academy rules allow only three producers to be credited for any best film nominee. (More on the three producers vs. five producers Academy deal at Tom O'Neil's Gold Derby.)
According to Variety, the Producers Guild winner has matched the best picture Oscar winner 11 times in the past 17 years. In the last two years, however, there were disagreements between the two groups.
In 2004, the PGA went for The Aviator while the Academy opted for Million Dollar Baby. Last year, the PGA (like just about every other group) voted for Brokeback Mountain while the Academy went for Crash.
This year may well be the third time in a row that the PGA and the Academy disagree, but then again stranger things (such as last year's Crash win) have happened.
Cars, produced by Darla K. Anderson, and directed by John Lasseter and Joe Ranft was named best animated feature.
Variety also reported that Al Gore gave a well-received speech at the presentation of the Stanley Kramer Award to the producers of An Inconvenient Truth.