After Christopher Nolan’s coronation at this year’s Academy Awards, the time has come to look ahead to next year’s ceremony and see who might make up the contenders for Best Director. Of the big five awards, this is by far the most often overlooked in terms of hype and anticipation, which makes it all the more intriguing to dive into. Not only is it overlooked, but it’s one of the more elusive awards given the relatively small number of people that can be nominated each year. Of the above-the-line categories, it’s the only one that has just five nominees. Of course, the writing and acting are split up into different categories which adds to the number of opportunities to be nominated, as well as the Best Picture category expanding to ten nominees in 2009.
Let’s look at some stats (provided by Filmsite) on the correlation between Best Picture and Best Director winners and nominees. More often than not, the Best Director award is handed to the director of the Best Picture recipient. In fact, these awards have been split just 27 times compared to the 68 times that a single film took home both trophies. The most recent example of this split is 2019’s ceremony when Green Book was named Best Picture and Alfonso Cuarón received the directing award for Roma. Perhaps the most recognizable and infamous split was just a couple years earlier when Damien Chazelle was one envelope misread away from taking home both Best Director and Best Picture, only for it to be revealed mid-speech that Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight had actually won the latter.
While this is not always the case, many Best Director nominees and winners come from directors who are considered auteurs, filmmakers who have their hand in every aspect of the process. Christopher Nolan winning for Oppenheimer is one of the chief examples here. He’s no “director-for-hire” on any project, and makes each film with his singular vision and style. The Academy cannot easily look at Oppenheimer and see his impact and hand guiding it every step of the way.
Many times this award can be considered a career achievement by pundits and is given to a long-time director for a fine film rather than actually going to the most deserving person for that year. A win that often gets pointed to in this case is Martin Scorsese for The Departed, which is still a darn good movie, but is rarely remembered as anywhere close to Scorsese’s best work. It was admittedly a weak year for film, but it is sad that it’s very likely that a filmmaker of Scorsese’s caliber will wind up with only one directing Oscar for a middle of the road film compared to much of his other projects.
Given these trends and things that the Academy in years past likes to look at for directing, here are some contenders for who could make up the field of nominees this year. The most obvious one is Denis Villeneuve for Dune: Part 2, as is the case with many awards this year I’m sure. He’s only been nominated once for Arrival, and his fingerprints are all over this film. Some older directors that have pictures releasing this year include Francis Ford Coppola with Megalopolis and Ridley Scott with Gladiator 2. It may seem far fetched, but if either of these films gain traction with audiences it would be a great story for either to be nominated and even win. While Coppola won for The Godfather Part II, it would be amazing for him to cap off his career with another win. Scott has never won, and similarly would be greatly deserving of the award if his sequel is successful. Additionally, Robert Eggers could have great success with Nosferatu, or George Miller with Furiosa.
