“The Revenant” director Alejandro Inarritu was among five nominees announced Tuesday for the Directors Guild of America Award for feature films, an award he won last year for “Birdman” en route to claiming the best-director Oscar.
Also nominated for the DGA honor — a strong indicator of Oscar success – – were Tom McCarthy for “Spotlight,” Adam McKay for “The Big Short,” George Miller for “Mad Max: Fury Road” and Ridley Scott for “The Martian.”
For Inarritu, the DGA nomination is his fourth. In addition to his win last year for “Birdman,” he was nominated for “Babel” in 2006 and won the prize for commercial directing in 2012 for a Procter & Gamble ad.
The nominations are the first for McCarthy, McKay and Miller.
Scott’s nomination is his fourth, although he has never won. He was also nominated in 1991 for “Thelma and Louise,” in 2000 for “Gladiator” and in 2001 for “Black Hawk Down.”
Since 1948, there have only been seven times that the winner of the DGA Award for feature film directing has not gone on to win the Oscar for best director.
The most recent time was 2013 when Ben Affleck won the DGA Award for “Argo,” but wasn’t even nominated for a directing Academy Award, even though the film won the Oscar for best picture.
The DGA also announced nominations today for outstanding directorial achievement for a first-time feature film director. The nominees are:
— Fernando Coimbra, “A Wolf at the Door”;
— Joel Edgerton, “The Gift”;
— Alex Garland, “Ex Machina”;
— Marielle Heller, “The Diary of a Teenage Girl”; and
— Laszlo Nemes, “Son of Saul.”
The DGA Awards will be presented Feb. 6 at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza hotel, in a ceremony hosted by Jane Lynch.
Nominations for television, commercial and documentary categories will be announced Wednesday.
—City News Service