The 25th Annual SAG Awards, hosted by Megan Mullally, will be simulcast live on TNT and TBS on Sunday, January 27, 2018, at 8PM ET / 5PM PT. It’s the actors’ party in the actors’ house when many of film and television’s brightest stars get together to mingle with friends and colleagues while recognizing outstanding achievements by their peers.
Each annual SAG Awards® embodies culture, style, and community for attendees and audiences alike. That welcoming atmosphere makes it easy to forget that everything here is on a larger-than-life scale.
How large a scale? Here are just a few of the numbers and other fun facts that go into transforming the huge empty space that is the Shrine Auditorium & Expo Hall into the dazzling event that is the 25th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards.
The Arrivals
- Guests walk past international media and fans along 17,100 square feet of carpet, the traditional red being replaced this year with plush silver to commemorate the SAG Awards Silver Anniversary
- There are 12,500 feet of hedges used for edging
- Three rows of six-foot high bleachers, totaling 180 linear feet, accommodate 300 fans
- Attendees are shielded from the weather by 21,500 square feet of tenting that covers the silver carpet
The Actor®
- Each solid bronze Actor® statuette is 16 inches tall and weighs a substantial 12 pounds
- It takes a team of ten craftspeople at American Fine Arts Foundry three to four months to make The Actors® each year
- Since 1995, the Inaugural SAG Awards, 1,158 individually numbered Actor® statuettes have been awarded
- Each statuette is individually numbered, with The Actor No. 1 on display at SAG-AFTRA headquarters in Los Angeles
- Seven larger-than-life replicas of The Actor® statuette, each nearly ten feet tall and weighing 162 pounds, are strategically positioned as guardians of the red carpet, the Showroom, the stage, and the official Post-Awards Gala
- Each giant Actor is made from steel, shaped using a silicone and fiberglass mold before being refined and painted
The Showroom
This year’s stage is dominated by a tunnel of asymmetrical arches that frame the giant screen with layers that provide depth and draw the viewer’s gaze. Each arch is individually lit with a glowing ribbon of light along its edges, adding to the multidimensional experience created by production designers John Shaffner and Joe Stewart.
- Each arch is outlined by nearly 100 feet of state-of-the-art LED tape
- Each step from the floor to the stage is edged with a glow matching the arches, totaling another 500 feet of the same LED tape
- It takes ten days to transform the Showroom for the SAG Awards, a feat made possible by months of pre-planning
- The Shrine’s Expo Hall’s 34,000 square foot wooden floor is cloaked in 11,800 square feet of black carpet
- About 15,000 square feet of black drapery swathes the previously bare walls
- The stage floor is overlaid with 300 sheets, 4 foot by 4 foot each, of black glossy Formica
- Each circular chandelier is 6 feet across and requires 30 feet of crystals, casting light that plays along the silver-leaf panels spaced along the showroom pillars
- In the 1953 version of A Star Is Born, Judy Garland and James Mason meet at the Shrine Auditorium, and she’s back there – this time onstage – for the heartbreaking finale
- The iconic Los Angeles Shrine Auditorium and Expo Hall was the largest theater in the United States when it was built in 1926
- The SAG Awards annually transforms the Shrine’s Expo Hall into an intimate dinner showroom for the televised ceremony and the Auditorium stage into a unique setting for the Post-Awards Gala hosted for the 23rd year in a row by PEOPLE
- In 1933, David O. Selznick’s groundbreaking King Kong used the Shrine Auditorium as the “New York” theater where the giant gorilla gets exhibited, helping to keep the film’s budget down to $672,000 (under $12 million in 2017 dollars)
- At 194 feet (59 meters) wide and 69 feet (21 meters) deep, the Shrine’s is thought to be the largest proscenium arch stage in the country.
- The Shrine was designated a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument in 1975
The People
- All SAG-AFTRA members in good standing are eligible to vote in all categories, which means 120,785 peers in the union choose the honorees this year
- 186 actors have been nominated for the 25th Screen Actors Guild Awards
- 769 performers (603 for Film, 166 for Television) are nominated in Outstanding Action Performance by a Stunt Ensemble categories
- It takes more than 700 staff and crew to make the SAG Awards a reality
The Audience
- The 25th Annual SAG Awards Ceremony will be simulcast live on TNT and TBS at 8 p.m. (ET) / 5 p.m. (PT)
- TBS and TNT subscribers can opt to watch the 25th Annual SAG Awards live on their device of choice through the networks’ websites and apps
- About 300,000 pedestrians a day walk past the giant Spectacolor HD electric billboard in Times Square that will be showing the live webcast of the official live pre-show PEOPLE, Entertainment Weekly & TNT Red Carpet Live: 25th Screen Actors Guild Awards
- The Spectacolor HD billboard display is 744 pixels x 992 pixels, and it requires video encoded at 10,000 – 25,000 kbits/sec.
- PEOPLE, Entertainment Weekly & TNT Red Carpet Live: 25th Screen Actors Guild Awards official pre-show will stream for two-and-a-half hours beginning 5:30 p.m. ET/2:30 p.m. PT on PeopleTV, Twitter, Facebook Live, tntdrama.com/sag-awards, sagawards.org, People.com and EW.com
Silver Carpet and Pre-Show Sponsor Reynolds Wrap®