SAG nominations orbit A Star Is Born

Vice and Roma face uphill battle as romantic revival has Best Picture Oscar in its sights

NEW YORK— A Star Is Born led nominations Wednesday for the 25th Screen Actors Guild Awards with four nods including Best Ensemble, firmly establishing Bradley Cooper’s romantic revival as the Academy Awards front-runner.

It also landed nominations for Cooper (Best Male Actor), Lady Gaga (Best Female Actor) and Sam Elliott (Best Supporting Male Actor).

But the actors guild threw cold water on the campaigns of other contenders.

The other nominees for the group’s top award, Best Ensemble, were: Black Panther, Bohemian Rhapsody, BlacKkKlansman and Crazy Rich Asians. That category is the most closely watched because only once in the last decades has the eventual Oscars Best Picture winner not been nominated for Best Ensemble: Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water last year.

Unless a new trend is forming, that’s bad news for Oscar hopefuls like Vice, Adam McKay’s Dick Cheney biopic; Alfonso Cuaron’s Netflix drama Roma and the 1962 road trip Green Book.

Vice still scored SAG nods for Christian Bale and Amy Adams, just as Green Book won nominations for Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali.

But Roma was shut out entirely, as was Damien Chazelle’s Neil Armstrong drama First Man and Barry Jenkins’ Harlem love story If Beale Street Could Talk.

Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Favourite failed to crack Best Ensemble, but its three leads — Olivia Colman, Rachel Weisz and Emma Stone — were all nominated.

The SAG Awards will be held Jan. 27.