DGA Preview – Will the Directors Clarify the best Picture Race?

The DGA will be announcing their top five nominated directors tomorrow. I don’t know, something tells me there are going to be angry people if one or two names are left off the list. But we’ll cross that catastrophe when it comes. For now, let’s just look at the names we think will be there.

The DGA now has a “first time director” category – and because it’s so new we don’t really have any sort of precedent to judge it by in terms of Best Picture. But the DGA itself is the most reliable predictor of Best Picture in all of the Oscar world, not so much in terms of who wins it but who is nominated. I think you have to once again dust off the old Driving Miss Daisy stat to find a year when poor Bruce Beresford, for whatever reason, was not nominated for the Globe, the DGA or the Oscar for director but Driving Miss Daisy kept winning anyway (its producers were the story that year because of the film’s box office).

What I’m wondering is this: If Jordan Peele is nominated for First Time Director he will certainly win that. Does that win qualify Get Out for a Best Picture win, or are we still locked into the DGA’s main five nominees for that stat. This is one of the big questions I will be waiting to find out in this very unpredictable Oscar year.

We expect any film anyone thinks has a shot at winning to show up at the DGA, so that’s probably:

Martin McDonagh, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
Guillermo del Toro, The Shape of Water
Christopher Nolan, Dunkirk

From here, it gets a little tricky. These last two spots could either be (which would be great):

Jordan Peele, Get Out
Greta Gerwig, Lady Bird

After Natalie Portman publicly shamed Globes voters for not nominating a woman, Gerwig is on track for an Oscar nod or else face the wrath of the #metoo movement, boycotts, protests, you name it. But Peele’s fate is less certain.

But it could also go:
Steven Spielberg, The Post
Luca Guadagnino, Call Me By Your Name

I suspect that Sean Baker for The Florida Project is probably a better bet for the Academy rather than DGA, and that could be true of Guadagnino and perhaps Paul Thomas Anderson.

Our predictions – mine, Marshall’s and Jazz are:

Martin McDonagh, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
Guillermo del Toro, The Shape of Water
Christopher Nolan, Dunkirk
Jordan Peele, Get Out
Greta Gerwig, Lady Bird

Ryan’s are:
Luca Guadagnino, Call Me By Your Name
Guillermo del Toro, The Shape of Water
Christopher Nolan, Dunkirk
Jordan Peele, Get Out
Greta Gerwig, Lady Bird

I know that there is a chance both Peele and Gerwig will be left off here but the reason I’m predicting them is that I think their movies are more popular and seen by more voters, thus they get in. Spielberg, as we know, is always a threat and could land here; if voters have the option of putting Peele in the other category they might do that to make room for another director.

What say you, Oscarwatchers?