Paul Thomas Anderson’s win over Ryan Coogler at the DGA’s had been the expected outcome for a while. But not only did “Sinners” record-breaking Oscar nomination haul raise some doubt, so did the memories of last year, when Sean Baker and “Anora” upended the entire race with a stunning DGA upset over presumed frontrunner Brady Corbet. However, as this year’s DGA results and director’s race have now proven, 2024 was the surprising exception to a near-decade of predictability and blowouts in Best Director.
In a historic context, expecting a second straight DGA and Best Director’s race to be surprising and suspenseful might have been wishful thinking, because the 2024 race was the first time DGA and Best Director had been shocking in a long time. Otherwise, nearly every single season in Best Director has been a foregone conclusion and a blowout, just as 2025 may now finally be about to become.
Thanks solely to Coogler, Anderson has not had an overwhelming sweep of the entire field all season, at least not to the extent that Chloe Zhao and Jane Campion had in 2020 and 2021 when they each had over 50 combined critics’, precursor, and industry awards. As of the DGAs, Anderson has 34 combined wins, though with the Oscars, BAFTAs, and a few holdover critics groups still to come, he may end the season at or just below 40 total wins. That would put him slightly around or below the totals of Christopher Nolan in 2023, the Daniels in 2022, and Alfonso Cuaron in 2018, while giving him around the same margin of overall victory over Coogler that Bong Joon-ho had over Sam Mendes in 2019.
Since Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu won his second straight Best Director Oscar in 2015, despite George Miller winning three times as many precursors for the season, Best Director has almost always been won by a dominant season-long frontrunner and winner. And after Damien Chazelle won his own two-man race over Barry Jenkins in 2016, and Guillermo del Toro won a fractured race in 2017, the Best Director precursor winner and eventual Oscar winner has almost always won going away – with 2024 being the very first exception of the entire 2020s.
Baker made history when he won Best Director with the fewest overall awards for an Oscar winner by far since Iñárritu in 2015, as he only had nine overall wins – including the DGA – before taking the Oscar. Yet 2024 was the most fractured race since 2017, as Corbet may have been considered the frontrunner. Still, he only had eighteen overall wins all season, which was well below the standard Nolan, the Daniels, Zhao, Campion, Joon-ho, and Cuaron had set in previous years.
It also reflected how fragile “The Brutalist” was as a Best Picture frontrunner, a point “Anora” backed up with its late guild wins and Oscar wins. But even when films like “The Power of the Dog” and “Roma” lost their own Best Picture leads, their directors still won easily as consolation prizes for those films. Since Corbet was an exception, it only further showed what a gigantic outlier 2024 was in recent Best Director history – and served to give some pundits late pause about how 2025 would turn out.
Because Coogler had made this the first race since 2016 in which two directors, instead of just one, won almost everything all year, it helped spark late doubt over Anderson’s supposed lead and inevitability. If this was any other year where “Sinners” hadn’t stolen the headlines and supposed momentum from “One Battle After Another” after the Oscar nominations, and if this wasn’t directly after the first DGA upset and less than lopsided Best Director race in a very long time, there would not have been nearly as much late wavering over Anderson as there was before this year’s DGAs. Although Anderson was still considered the favorite, there was much more caution over a potential surprise than there was before Baker upset Corbet, and much more warning that maybe Best Director could be upended at the finish line again.
However, now that Anderson has won the DGA, and now that BAFTA will likely close what little room there is left for an Oscar upset, it is safe to say order has been restored – if not fully in the Best Picture race yet, then at least in the natural order of a Best Director race this decade.
For the ninth time in the last ten years, it seems certain that the most honored Best Director winner of the season will also win the Oscar. In that same span since 2015, four Best Picture winners have won the Oscar despite not winning the most precursors, and so have six Best Actors, five Best Actresses, three Best Supporting Actors, two Best Supporting Actresses, three Best Original Screenplays, and four Best Adapted Screenplays.
Almost without fail, Best Director is the most stable and usually the most lopsided major category of every Oscar season, even if the winners have their films trip up late in Best Picture. Since 2024 changed the usual formula in such a massive way, it made it all the more curious to see if the 2025 race would head back towards stability, or continue a new trend of chaos. But now, thanks to the DGA going as predicted from the beginning of the season, it appears Best Director has gone back to the same order and rigidity it always has, making 2024 a true one-year blip in tradition.
2025 is still an exception of sorts, like 2016 was, because Coogler won almost everything Anderson didn’t all season, much like Jenkins won almost everything Chazelle didn’t. That did ultimately pay off in a bigger way when “Moonlight,” which won almost every Best Picture prize, “La La Land” didn’t in 2016, just like “Sinners” has won everything, “One Battle After Another” hasn’t in 2025 – shocked with a Best Picture win even after Jenkins lost the Best Director Oscar. The PGA will be the next, if not last, chance for “Sinners” to prove it can still upset for Best Picture despite Coogler losing his chance for Best Director, although “Moonlight” didn’t need to win the PGA for that either.
Whether or not Best Picture still has a final twist, it now seems certain that even if “One Battle After Another” gets caught for Best Picture, Anderson winning Best Director would remain a near-complete lock. It would either support an easy Best Picture win just like the wins for Nolan, the Daniels, and Zhao did, or serve as the major consolation prize for a former Best Picture frontrunner just like with Campion, Chazelle, and Cuaron.
Recent history, these last ten years, suggests there is precedent for a late Best Picture surprise, no matter how safe things may look for “One Battle After Another” once again. But when it comes to Best Director, 2024 remains the only time the Best Director Oscar has gone against the season-long grain in this entire last decade, leaving aside Joon-ho’s Oscar win after Mendes appeared to overtake him at DGA and BAFTA. Otherwise, Anderson’s DGA victory reinforced that Best Director, if nothing else, is back to business as usual this year.
What do you think is going to win Best Picture at the Oscars? “Sinners” or “One Battle After Another?” Please let us know in the comments section below and on Next Best Picture’s X account, click here here for the most recent tally of awards season winners, here for Next Best Picture’s precursor tracker, and here for their current Oscar predictions.
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