77th Directors Guild Nominations

Today’s other major guild announcement is good news for some, bad news for others. Coralie Fargeat, Denis Villeneuve, and Jon M. Chu all desperately needed a citation here to stay in contention for the Oscars. The all-male list might spur the Academy to replace someone (probably Mangold) with Fargeat. Chu had always seemed like an outsider in this race and this confirms that. Two first-time directors that are in the running for Oscar, Payal Kapadia and RaMell Ross, got the first-time citation, which will bolster their chances. Like Fargeat, Kapadia might benefit from a bump to one of the men nominated by the DGA. She’s much more like some of the off-the-wall choices they’ve made in the past but is far from certain. Everyone was shocked in 2021 when Villeneuve got the DGA nom but didn’t score at Oscar. I always thought he wasn’t going to make up for that this year and in spite of his performance at various precursors, these nominations bear that out. If he couldn’t get nominated for the sequel at the DGA when he was for the original, the Academy isn’t likely to bite either. I’m beginning to wonder if this might be the year that spurs the Academy to increase the number of Directing nominees to ten to match Bes Picture.