Officially, the movie award season has finally begun, with the Screen Actors Guild and the Golden Globes nominations already hitting the mainstream media ... and just last Wednesday, Birdman's SAG nominations led this year's race for the awards.

Now that the calendar has reached December, the season with the award shows is finally here, and Birdman's SAG nominations have been leading up the nods in the race to the Academy Awards next February, and, as the Golden Globes are announced as well, things are starting to look clearer and clearer.

According to The Independent, Birdman's SAG nominations - four in total, for the most nominated movie in the award show - show a strong lead in the movie at the face of other contenders such as "The Theory of Everything" or "The Imitation Game," the two big science-themed biopics that were thought would be the ones to lead when it came to award shows.

In a surprise move, however, for the three biggest cast members of "Birdman," SAG awards are a reality: leading man Michael Keaton, "The Amazing Spider-Man" actress Emma Stone and Edward Norton gathered individual nominations for their work in the film, which tells the story of a has-been actor who was once famous for playing the role of a superhero (not to be confused with Keaton's stint as Batman). For its fourth nomination, the film got a Best Ensemble nod.

According to the Los Angeles Times, one of the most interesting things behind Birdman's SAG nominations is the fact that it's turned into a year for the smaller studios, as the bigger ones get shut out of the competition.

Another big contender, Richard Linklater's "Boyhood," gathered three nominations in the Screen Actors Guild; the two biopics about British scientists ("The Theory of Everything" about Stephen Hawking, starring Eddie Redmayne; "The Imitation Game" starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Alan Turing) also gathered three nods each.

You can watch the full list of nominees for the Screen Actors Guild here, in The Daily Mail.