Hollywood’s awards season calendar resumes this weekend with the PGA Awards, the DGA Awards, and the Critics Choice Awards all revealing their winners within 36 hours of each other. On Sunday, the Grammy Awards broke the damn by being the first ceremony held after the devastating wildfires last month, but people are still on edge in the television and film business. A fact Producers Guild Presidents Donald DeLine and Stephanie Allain Bray as well as PGA CEO Susan Sprung are very well aware of.
READ MORE: “Wicked,” “Conclave,” and “The Penguin” Earn 2025 PGA Awards Nominations
“Listen, the 2020s have not been easy, right? We had the strikes, we now have the fires. It’s been brutal,” DeLine says. “And everyone thought January 1st, 2025, we’re going to come roaring back and we got slammed. Life teaches you lessons, doesn’t it? It’s been hard. We started a fire fund. Susan got us all together on the weekend for an emergency executive board meeting and started the fire fund. We have about $450,000 already and going strong to help our members in need who were either displaced due to the fires or lost their homes.”
Context is key, and, as DeLine pointed out, this decade has been rough for Hollywood. The PGA also has a recent model for dealing with a crisis of this nature, COVID-19.
“We did a version of this in COVID, and again, this is just the credit to our amazing board, the idea that on a weekend we called an emergency executive committee meeting and they agreed to commit a percentage of the proceeds from the PGA awards to this fund,” Sprung says. “And then many board members also personally stepped up and contributed on top of that. And I think the fact that there was this crisis and producers, our board immediately said, ‘What can we do to help?’ And we reached out to the Entertainment Community fund and the fund was up and running within days, and they very generously agreed to waive all of their typical fees in connection with administering this for us and then providing all kinds of educational services. So, what I find so inspiring is how all of these producers who are amazingly entrepreneurial saw a problem and immediately went into action to figure out how to bring resources and fix it.”
Allain Bray, whose credits include “Hustle & Flow,” “Dear White People” and producing the 2020 Academy Awards, knows her peers tackle these sorts of logistical issues every day.
“We are the ones who step up front to get stuff done, are just coming together and it’s really beautiful,” Allain Bray says. “We have board meetings where some people don’t show up, everybody showed up for this. You know what I mean? And I think that’s a testament to the care and the concern and the way producers respond to a problem. You know what I mean? Roll up our sleeves, let’s get in there. And so we’re very proud of Susan, for spearheading and everybody’s stepping up to contribute and to vote for the fund.”
Sprung makes it clear, that this year’s ceremony is not meant to be a fundraiser. If attendees want to contribute to the fund, they would love for them to do so, but the night is meant to foster community.
“It’s amazing what the firefighters did,” Sprung says. “But we do have board members who lost their houses. And what is amazing is in conversations with them about how they showed up at a board meeting, how important it is to feel your community when you’re a little bit untethered.”
There are years of rebuilding ahead, but what is imperative for many is a problem that was evident before the wildfires: a serious drop in film and television production in Southern California. Sprung represents the PGA on the California Production Alliance, a group advocating for a quick turnaround.
“What we really want to work on is messaging to everyone, the importance of the entertainment industry in Southern California,” Sprung says. “And if you think about what has made this whole state, it’s not even just LA important. The entertainment industry is so central to it. There are all of these ancillary businesses related to it. And so we are very active in participating with all of them. And we have a group of members that are really invested in this, and they’re just available for whatever we need them to do. I also sit on a committee at Film LA that deals with the same issue. And we just have to keep beating the drum. Clearly, they’re the best producers in the world here. We have the best crews in the world. We have amazing stage space. We just have to get budgets close enough so people can make the argument to film in LA because people want to be here.”
DeLine adds, “Not only do they want to be here, but right now if you’re displaced, your kids’ school may have burned down, they’re in a new school, you’re displaced. It’s a traumatic experience, and then you have to leave home and go on location. It adds so much stress and so much hardship to an already terrible situation. So, we are calling on studios and financiers also to support bringing movies back to Los Angeles. We’re all based here for a reason. The movie business really kind of is the foundation of Los Angeles. It made Los Angeles, and we’ve really got to take care of our own.”
Allain Bray makes an excellent point adding, “And to be fair, it’s not just the folks who work in the business. When my nail person says, ‘Are they bringing work back to LA?’ We got a problem. So, the restaurants, this, it’s not just us, it’s the whole community. It’s an ecosystem.”
Sprung notes, “By the way, it’s not just LA. It really is the entire state, right? It has a massive, massive impact on California.”
“Hey, we’re the Sunshine State,” DeLine, a former President of Paramount Pictures chimes in. “We came here to make movies because of the light. Know what I’m saying? The guys from the East Coast originally came here for that.”
One way for more productions to stay in the state is for an increase in California state tax incentives. Currently, the state gives about $330 million a year in incentives. That’s substantially below New York ($700 million) and Georgia (up to $1 billion). Governor Newsom has proposed increasing that amount to $750 million, but that was before the devastating fires hit Los Angeles. Moreover, the new figure still hasn’t been greenlit in the California legislature. During our conversation this past weekend, the PGA leadership was visibly frustrated over how the lack of urgency in Sacramento.
“They haven’t even been approved, they’ve just been floated,” Allain Bray says. “We need that and more. We just need to be competitive. This is the thing. If you can do the same movie here that you can in Atlanta you’re going to want to do it here. You know what I mean?
DeLine bluntly notes, “When you meet someone who says they’re shooting a movie and they’re here getting to sleep in their own room in Los Angeles, it’s a miracle these days. I mean, honestly, I’ve done it once in the last 10 years.”
Lastly, as Bowen Yang and Rachel Sennott pointed out when announcing the Best Picture nominees last month, there were five films with a “nominees to be determined” designation. The Academy is even selling a t-shirt online with the designation. The PGA says these films – which include “The Brutalist” and “The Substance” – were submitted too late in the process to be determined by nomination day. And, if more producers submitted for a Producer’s Mark, something that can be done during post-production, this wouldn’t be an issue.
The PGA staff also only administers the process. The determinations are made by experienced producers and up to 22 distinct department heads contribute information. There are 35 multiple-choice questions and 10 free-response questions. According to the guild, it’s a huge amount of paperwork that goes into vetting each of these files.
The films that did have their producers announced on nomination day? They all had Producer Marks and were vetted well in advance. There is also an awards-only determination and they take time. It just so happened this year that several movies were in process, and as a result, they were announced as “to be determined.” So, for producers who think their film may be nominated in 2026? Submit sooner rather than later.
The 2025 PGA Awards will be handed out in a ceremony on Saturday, February 8th.
Photo Credit: Matthew Smith, PGA