Apple Original Films’ CODA has won the Darryl F. Zanuck Award for Outstanding Producer of Theatrical Motion Pictures at PGA, making a Best Picture win at Oscar next Sunday highly likely, while also making history at PGA as the first ever streaming film to win this award.
“It’s incredible,” producer Philippe Rousselet said, accepting the award with his fellow producers Fabrice Gianfermi and Patrick Wachsberger. “It really means so much coming from our peers. I think we will all agree a good movie always starts with a good story… and in a world where we see the lack [of humanity] every say I’ll take this award as a sign there there is still hope.”
“This movie has been an amazing ride,” Gianfermi added. “It was such a special one to make. There was so much love and so much heart put into it.”
The PGA shares the preferential voting system with Oscars—both organizations switched to that voting system in 2009—and this award is always a super-powered indicator of the Best Picture winner at Oscar. In fact, in the past 12 years, the PGA prize has tallied with the Oscar Best Picture winner a staggering 22 out of the past 32 years. And since 2009, only three films didn’t line up with both PGA and Oscar: The Big Short, La La Land and 1917.
CODA—which has three Oscar nominations—has already taken home the Ensemble award at SAG and an acting award for its star Troy Kotsur, who also won at the Critics Choice and again at BAFTA where writer-director Sian Heder also won Best Adapted Screenplay. Kotsur’s wins made history as the first Deaf actor to win in his category.
The film, which was snapped up by Apple Original Films in a record deal out of Sundance, follows the story of Ruby (Emilia Jones), a CODA, or child of deaf adults, struggling to help her deaf family—played by Marlee Matlin, Kotsur and Daniel Durant—with their fishing business, while pursuing her own dreams as a singer.
