Oscars: ‘CODA’s’ Winning Weekend Turns Best Picture Into A Horserace, But How Reliable Are The Guilds To A Global Academy? (ANALYSIS)

deadline.com:

CODA is on a roll this final weekend of Oscar voting (Ballots are due at 5:00pm pt on Tuesday) , getting a major shot of adrenaline by taking the PGA’s top Best Picture prize, and now just picking up the WGA award for Adapted Screenplay today.

If you are counting that now gives it a solid three of the four major guild (DGA, PGA, SAG, WGA) honors to put itself in a strong position going into the last stop of this long season, the Oscars next Sunday.

What this one-two-three punch will mean to the ongoing Oscar balloting is anyone’s guess, but the headlines of these major peer group wins from groups that definitely have some significant crossover with Academy membership will be hard to ignore.Let’s geek out.In a season where Belfast was the early front runner, perhaps peaking too soon, and now coming up empty at the four major guild awards (due to WGA’s arcane rules it wasn’t eligible to compete there), it looks to be a horserace for Best Picture between Netflix’s The Power Of The Dog and  Apple’s CODA, the former having as good a run last weekend by taking DGA, Critics Choice, and BAFTA honors as the latter is having this weekend.

Focus Features, which is heavily campaigning for Belfast is still hopeful, and anything is possible here but, at least with conventional wisdom, it looks finally that a streamer will take Best Picture, that is unless Belfast can go against the odds and pull off what would now be considered a surprise Best Picture win at the Oscars despite striking out at the Guilds.No film, since SAG started their own awards show 27 years ago and joined PGA DGA and WGA on the precursor circuit, has gone on to win Best Picture without at least one of those four major guild prizes, and only four films in that time