Skip to main content

Best Director Oscar rematch Christopher Nolan and Greta Gerwig first faced off 6 years ago



Christopher Nolan and Greta Gerwig are both back in the hunt for the Best Director Oscar, six years after they contended for war epic "Dunkirk" and coming-of-age film "Lady Bird," respectively. The Hollywood heavyweights originally faced off at the 90th Academy Awards (plus the Critics Choice and DGA Awards), where they lost to Guillermo del Toro, whose romantic fantasy "The Shape of Water" swam away with four total trophies for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Score and Best Production Design. "Dunkirk" claimed three Oscars that year -- Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing and Best Film Editing -- while "Lady Bird" was skunked.

Now, Nolan and Gerwig are in the awards conversation once again for directing "Oppenheimer" and "Barbie," respectively. The helmers are expected to compete against each other in this year's epic Best Director Oscar rematch. Will either of them prevail this time around?

More from GoldDerby

SEE'Oppenheimer': Above-the-line Oscars for Christopher Nolan, Cillian Murphy, Robert Downey Jr. and more?

Nolan ("Oppenheimer") currently leads Gold Derby's predictions at 18/5 odds for directing the Universal Pictures biopic starring Cillian Murphy as the creator of the atomic bomb. In second place is Martin Scorsese ("Killers of the Flower Moon") at 4/1 odds for Apple Original Films' Western period piece. Yorgos Lanthimos ("Poor Things") recently jumped into third place at 13/2 odds, buoyed by stellar festival reviews for the Searchlight Pictures dark comedy. Gerwig ("Barbie") comes in fourth place at 8/1 odds for Warner Bros. Pictures' film featuring Margot Robbie as the iconic blonde doll. Rounding out our Top 5 is Jonathan Glazer ("The Zone of Interest") at 21/2 odds for A24's emotional Holocaust drama.

At five career Oscar nominations and no wins, Nolan is beginning to attain the "overdue" factor that has plagued so many filmmakers through the years. (For what it's worth, Scorsese didn't triumph until his eighth total bid, for directing 2006's "The Departed.") Nolan's prior citations came for 2001's "Memento" (writing), 2010's "Inception" (writing and producing) and 2017's "Dunkirk" (directing and producing). With "Oppenheimer," Nolan could add three more Oscar bids to his name for directing, writing and producing.

SEE'Barbie' director Greta Gerwig hoping to become the next Jane Campion at Oscars

To compare, Gerwig is a three-time career nominee for writing and directing "Lady Bird" (2017) and writing "Little Women" (2019). She directed "Barbie" and co-wrote it with her husband Noah Baumbach, but did not produce the comedy blockbuster, so two Oscar nominations is the most she can garner this year.

Gold Derby's Oscar Experts from major media outlets are strongly in the Nolan camp, with 15 out of 22 predicting he will prevail in the Best Director race. The other seven Experts think Scorsese will pull off a victory. As for Gerwig, she is the second-place choice to win for three of our Experts.

One additional fun factor that bears mentioning: "Oppenheimer" and "Barbie" opened on the same date, July 21, 2023, and helped boost each other's box office receipts as many moviegoers opted to see both films. The "Barbenheimer" phenomenon was one of the biggest things to happen to theaters in the era of the Covid-19 pandemic, and proved that people are still willing to open their wallets for movies that interest them. To date, "Oppenheimer" has raked in $315 million domestically while "Barbie" reigns supreme at $620 million (the biggest for the 2023 calendar year).

PREDICT the 2024 Oscar nominees through January 23

Make your predictions at Gold Derby now. Download our free and easy app for Apple/iPhone devices or Android (Google Play) to compete against legions of other fans plus our experts and editors for best prediction accuracy scores. See our latest prediction champs. Can you top our esteemed leaderboards next? Always remember to keep your predictions updated because they impact our latest racetrack odds, which terrify Hollywood chiefs and stars. Don't miss the fun. Speak up and share your huffy opinions in our famous forums where 5,000 showbiz leaders lurk every day to track latest awards buzz. Everybody wants to know: What do you think? Who do you predict and why?

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Osho Quotes on Meditation

Osho Quotes on Meditation If tea-drinking can become a meditation, then anything can become a meditation — cooking or washing your clothes, any activity can be transformed into meditation. And the real sannyasin, the real seeker, will transform all his acts into meditation. Only then, when meditation spreads over all your life, not only when you are awake in the day — slowly slowly it starts penetrating and permeating your being in sleep too — when it becomes just part of you, like breathing, like your heartbeat, then, only, have you attained to the discipline, to the essential discipline of Zen. Meditation means: drop all thoughts, drop all ideologies, drop all knowledge. Drop the mind itself. The mind is constantly talking. If the inner talk can drop even for a single moment you will be able to have a glimpse of no-mind. That’s what meditation is all about. The state of no-mind is the right state. It is your state. Millions of people miss meditation because meditation has taken on...

Im a mum I save time doing my kids lunches using savvy hacks its easy

EVERYONE parent will know just how crazy the mornings can be when you're getting the kids ready for school. From prepping their lunches, to getting them washed and ready - time can fly by. But one savvy mum has shared just the hack to help speed up the process in the mornings. The mum, who goes by the name of Azure MacCannell on TikTok, has revealed a super time saving trick. She preps all of the sandwiches for the week, and freezes them. Azure has two lines of separate pieces of bread next to each other, On one line she spreads peanut butter, and on the other line she spreads jam. Azure then places the bread on top of each other to make a sandwich, before using a crust cutter to make the sandwiches into smaller squares. She then puts them into a big container and freezes them and use them "as needed." Azure also freezes the crust for "delicious French toast sticks." The video attracted thousands of likes, with many rushing to the comments section to share their...

Osho on Witnessing technique

Osho on Witnessing technique – You can witness breathing, you can witness the thought process in OSHO INSIGHTS ON MEDITATION Osho – Societies will come and go. You will take birth and you will die and many lives will come and go, and many, many clouds will pass through you. But the inner sky – AKSHAT – remains uncorrupted, virgin. But you can become identified with clouds. You can begin to feel that ”I am the clouds”. Everyone is identified with his own thoughts which are nothing more than clouds. You say, ”my thought,” and if someone attacks your thought, you never feel that your thought is being attacked – you are being attacked. The sky is fighting – fighting for clouds because some cloud has been attacked. The sky feels, ”I am attacked!” The sky was there when there was no cloud, the sky will be there when there is no cloud. Clouds add nothing to the sky. And when clouds are no more, nothing is lost. The sky remains itself totally. This is the nature – the inner sky, the inn...