Oscars Best Director breakdown: Sean Baker still ahead with Brady Corbet just behind
Originally published Feb. 7, 2025 at 1 p.m. PT; updated Feb. 16, 2025 at 1:05 p.m. PT after the BAFTA Awards results.
Some Oscar categories remain highly volatile and unpredictable. Before the Directors Guild Awards, Best Director did not appear to be one of them. Whoops! Sean Baker won top honors from the Directors Guild for Anora, grabbing this year’s race away from The Brutalist filmmaker Brady Corbet. Corbet was so far out in front that before the DGA Awards no Gold Derby expert expected him to lose at the Oscars on March 2. But is Corbet back after the BAFTA Awards win? Here’s our analysis of the Oscar Best Director race.
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Frontrunner: Sean Baker, Anora
If Anora had been the Best Picture frontrunner all along — after all, the Neon release and Palme d’Or winner had been the top pick in the Gold Derby odds for months this past fall — maybe more attention should have been paid to Baker. Awards experts long underestimated the industry veteran and indie film legend, so much so that just after the Oscar nominations were announced in January, Baker opened at fourth place in the Best Director odds. But his win at the Directors Guild is a boon for his chances. Since 2000, only three Directors Guild Award winners who were also nominated at the Oscars failed to secure a victory with the Academy: Ang Lee (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), Rob Marshall (Chicago), and Sam Mendes (1917). (Ben Affleck also won at the Directors Guild for Argo in 2013, but Affleck was snubbed at the Oscars that year and thus did not compete to win or lose at the ceremony.) That stat puts the odds overwhelmingly in Baker’s direction. Based on historical precedent, it isn’t easy to imagine a scenario where he loses on Oscar night, even after Corbet’s BAFTA win.
Potential Spoiler: Brady Corbet, The Brutalist
Before the Directors Guild Awards, Corbet was the frontrunner to win Best Director. The 36-year-old auteur has won several precursor honors for The Brutalist, including the Silver Lion for Best Director at the Venice Film Festival (where the film premiered) and the Golden Globe Award. However, signs were present that Corbet wasn’t a slam dunk winner — most just ignored the red flags. Corbet failed to win Best Director award from the major critic groups in New York and Los Angeles, and then, on Friday night, he lost Best Director at the Critics Choice Awards to Wicked filmmaker Jon M. Chu. That defeat was maybe easy to rationalize: voting for the Critics Choice Awards ended on Jan. 10, and the group giving the award to Chu felt like a choice designed to shake up the Best Director race. But if Corbet had been the critical favorite, he probably would have won Best Director from one of the major critics’ groups. Still, his win at the BAFTA Awards stabilized Corbet’s campaign at the right time: Oscar voting continues until Feb. 18, and people love to back a (recent) winner.
Underdog: James Mangold, A Complete Unknown
In some ways, Mangold wasn’t even supposed to be here. He sat outside the top seven in the Best Director odds all season, heading into the Oscar nominations, even after landing a bid from the Directors Guild Awards. However, the veteran filmmaker — as adept in handling a music biopic like A Complete Unknown as he is in a summer blockbuster like Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny — has been underestimated for much of his career. His work on A Complete Unknown stands out because while the film is very traditional in many ways — the kind of classic old-school filmmaking that the directors’ branch sometimes ignores — it also subverts the expectations of the biopic genre. Beyond the content of his project is its perceived momentum: A Complete Unknown has overperformed with the industry throughout the winter, and for many Academy members, it has stood out as a personal favorite. If that wave of support continues through voting, it’s possible Mangold could be the beneficiary.
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