One Battle After Another, Frankenstein and The Fantastic Four: First Steps were the big winners at the Art Directors Guild awards Saturday night, winning the top three live-action awards in production design. KPop Demon Hunters landed the prize for best production design in an animated film.
The three live-action films — which won in contemporary, period and fantasy categories, respectively — now have a leg up for the production design award at the Oscars. though Fantastic Four may be in the strongest position: The fantasy winner has nabbed the Academy Award in three of the past four years.
Meanwhile, Apple TV was the big winner on the television side. The streamer landed three of the top prizes, for episodes of Severance, Palm Royale and The Studio. (They won for one-hour contemporary single-camera, one-hour period single-camera and half-hour single camera, respectively.)
The ADG awards, the organization’s 30th, honor “the visionary production design teams behind the year’s most visually ambitious films, television series and music projects,” according to the organization.
At a moment when human-led design is under threat by AI and computer models, the awards stand as a kind of rebuttal for what machines can’t do. “The event underscored the vital role production designers and art directors play in shaping cinematic storytelling and immersive environments that define today’s most celebrated films and television series,” the ADG said in a statement.
Below is a complete list of winners:
PERIOD FEATURE FILM
Frankenstein
Production Designer: Tamara Deverell
FANTASY FEATURE FILM
The Fantastic Four: First Steps
Production Designer: Kasra Farahani
CONTEMPORARY FEATURE FILM
One Battle After Another
Production Designer: Florencia Martin
ANIMATED FEATURE FILM
KPop Demon Hunters
Production Designers: Mingjue Helen Chen, Dave Bleich
***TELEVISION NOMINEES***
ONE-HOUR PERIOD SINGLE-CAMERA SERIES
Palm Royale: “Maxine Drinks Martini’s Now,” “Maxine Serves a Swerve”
Production Designer: Jon Carlos
ONE-HOUR FANTASY SINGLE-CAMERA SERIES
Andor: “Who Are You?”
Production Designer: Luke Hull
ONE-HOUR CONTEMPORARY SINGLE-CAMERA SERIES
Severance: “Chikhai Bardo”
Production Designer: Jeremy Hindle
TELEVISION MOVIE OR LIMITED SERIES
Monster: The Ed Gein Story
Production Designer: Matthew Flood Ferguson
HALF-HOUR SINGLE-CAMERA SERIES
The Studio: “The Note”
Production Designer: Julie Berghoff
MULTI-CAMERA SERIES
Mid-Century Modern: “Bye, George”
Production Designer: Glenda Rovello
VARIETY OR REALITY SERIES
Saturday Night Live: “Lady Gaga Host”
Production Designers: Akira Yoshimura, Keith Ian Raywood, N. Joseph De Tullio, Andrea Purcigliotti
VARIETY SPECIAL
SNL50: The Anniversary Special
Production Designers: Akira Yoshimura, Keith Ian Raywood, N. Joseph De Tullio
COMMERCIALS
Prada: “Galleria Bag”
Production Designer: Florencia Martin
SHORT FORMAT & MUSIC VIDEOS
Apple – Someday by Spike Jonze: “AirPods 4 with Active Noise Cancelation”
Production Designer: Shane Valentino
