Best Director used to drive the Best Picture race: in the 69 years of Oscar history where there were five Best Picture nominees, the top two categories matched 77% of the time (53/69). Now in the current era of the expanded Best Picture lineup, it doesn’t: since 2009, Picture and Director have agreed only 54% of the time (7/13). In other words, splits have occurred twice as often as before. So now, even if the director category is dominated by one name all the way through the season, it’s basically a coin flip on whether Best Picture agrees or not.
A director now can be celebrated even if voters don’t love their movie as much. The idea is that the more ambitious the film, the more divisive they tend to be. That isn’t always true, of course. But we do seem to be quite a long way from the year Tom Hooper won Best Director for The King’s Speech.
This year, there is are definitely two roads the Oscars and the film industry can take. One is to go bigger and the other is to continue down the road of more “niche” films. We used to call these “indies” – although that term no longer applies since almost every movie in the race tends to be an “indie.” The big studios are repped still but they don’t make up the majority of the offerings. Big studios are in the race this year, especially if you factor in their specialty divisions:
King Richard, Dune — Warner Bros
Belfast — Focus Features (Universal)
Nightmare Alley, The French Dispatch — Searchlight (Disney)
Licorice Pizza, House of Gucci, Cyrano, No Time to Die — MGM/UA Studios
Spider-Man: No Way Home — Sony
The Last Duel — 20th Century (Disney)
And the “independents”:
The Tragedy of Macbeth — A24
Spencer — Neon
And then of course there is new media nipping at their heels:
The Power of the Dog, Don’t Look Up, tick, tick…BOOM!, The Lost Daughter — Netflix
CODA — Apple
Being the Ricardos — Amazon
It’s harder to break the dominance of the bigger studios in the Oscar race provided they offer up movies Oscar voters like. If given the choice, they’d stick with studio fare, as it is (or was) their bread and butter. But the word “studio” has expanded now, there is no denying it. Netflix very nearly dominates this year’s Oscar race by presenting a slate of films Oscar voters can’t refuse.
The DGA will tell us which five films are the strongest heading into the Oscar race. We expect all five will also be on the PGA’s list, announced the same day.
The Directors Guild usually predicts what will be nominated for Best Picture. In the era of the expanded ballot, all but one got in for Best Picture — The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo remains the only exception. Prior to 2009, however, it was quite common for the DGA to name a movie that missed at the Oscars. We assume this means in an expanded ballot era they would have been nominated. This would include movies like:
Into the Wild
Dreamgirls
Memento
Almost Famous
Amistad
Since we’re getting all of our major guild nominations in one day, shockingly, by tomorrow we’ll know what the producers, editors, writers, and directors all liked. It should not be that hard to look at those results and get a very clear picture of what the Oscar race will look like because they’re all voting at the same time. That means there isn’t a lot of wiggle room in terms of influence unless something is snubbed and that makes news.
It looks like, at least from where we sit now, there are four locks for the DGA:
Jane Campion, The Power of the Dog
Kenneth Branagh, Belfast
Denis Villeneuve, Dune
Steven Spielberg, West Side Story
And then a fifth slot that seems to come down to:
Adam McKay, Don’t Look Up
Paul Thomas Anderson, Licorice Pizza
Guillermo del Toro, Nightmare Alley
Maggie Gyllenhaal, The Lost Daughter
Reinaldo Marcus Green, King Richard
It could go to any of these directors, though Gyllenhaal is a good bet for the DGA’s “first-time” director category, along with Rebecca Hall for Passing, Sian Heder for CODA, Leisl Tommy for Respect, Lin Manuel-Miranda for tick, tick…BOOM!, Fran Kranz for Mass.
If you go by the most popular movie, you have to land with either Don’t Look Up or King Richard, as both have gotten every major nomination and mention heading into the race.
Folding in SAG Ensemble
But then if you look at the SAG ensemble category, there is a pretty good chance the fifth slot will be from the SAG group. In general, two names cross categories — sometimes three, occasionally four. But one? That has happened only once in SAG/DGA history. That seems unlikely to me. That takes it down to:
Reinaldo Marcus Green, King Richard
Adam McKay, Don’t Look Up
Sian Heder, CODA
Ridley Scott, House of Gucci
Honestly, it could go either way, but I’m betting on McKay or Green. And I can’t decide between the two. Both films have the same cred heading into the race. McKay is more well-known in the industry overall and would be looking at his third consecutive nomination. Don’t Look Up is certainly a Hollywood activist movie. It is right in their wheelhouse. King Richard has Will Smith as the potential Best Actor winner. Honestly, Heder could sneak in there too. Two things drive the DGA nod: notoriety of the director (Don’t Look Up) and likability of the movie overall (King Richard).
Anyway, who knows. Flip a coin.
Our DGA predictions:
Kenneth Branagh, Belfast — Ryan Adams, Marshall Flores, Mark Johnson, Clarence Moye, Sasha Stone
Jane Campion, The Power of the Dog — Adams, Flores, Johnson, Moye, Stone
Guillermo del Toro, Nightmare Alley — Adams, Flores
Maggie Gyllenhaal, The Lost Daughter — Johnson
Adam McKay, Don’t Look Up — Moye
Steven Spielberg, West Side Story — Adams, Flores, Johnson, Moye, Stone
Denis Villeneuve, Dune — Adams, Flores, Johnson, Moye, Stone
Reinaldo Marcus Green, King Richard or Adam McKay, Don’t Look Up — Stone
And here are the charts: