Oscars: Could ‘La La Land’ break awards season certainty?
ONLY on three occasions has the Directors Guild and Producers Guild award winner failed to win the Best Picture Oscar. Which other awards did those outsiders have in common?
After Damien Chazelle was announced the Directors Guild of America’s Feature Film winner on Feb 4, he is almost certain to clinch Best Director at the Oscars on Feb 26th.
Since 1951 and 2016, there have been only six occasions upon which the DGA’s Outstanding Director did not receive an equivalent Oscar for the same feature.
Going on past precedent, that gives Damien Chazelle a 90% likelihood of being named Best Director at the 89th Academy Awards. As far as predictions go, it’s a lock.
Related to that, the film steered by the DGA’s Outstanding Director, in this case ‘ La La Land’, won the Academy Awards’ prestige prize, Best Picture, 80% of the time.
However, since the Producers Guild started up its own awards ceremony in 1989, the DGA figure has fallen to 74%.
That’s why, from an Oscar prediction perspective, the DGA and PGA awards are examined together.
Where the two diverge, one or the other will most likely get it right -- 88% of the time, to be precise -- though in this case, ‘La La Land’ has both guilds backing it.
‘ Braveheart’ (1996,) ‘Shakespeare in Love’ (1999) and ‘Spotlight’ ( 2016) are the three exceptions to the rule.
‘Braveheart’ won Best Pic when the DGA and PGA chose ‘Apollo 13’, and they both preferred ‘Saving Private Ryan’ to the Academy’s ‘Shakespeare in Love’.
When industry outsider ‘Spotlight’ triumphed it was at the expense of ‘ The Big Short’ ( DGA) and ‘ The Revenant’ ( PGA.)
This prediction-beating trio share little else in common.
Yet, all three won a Writers Guild of America award for Best Original Screenplay, on top of a place in the previous year’s National Board of Review Top Ten.
Though the WGAs are pending, there are three other films that still win that rarer triple crown in 2017: “‘Manchester By the Sea’, ‘ Moonlight’, and ‘ Hell or High Water’ all made the NBR’s list. Should the correlation hold, each would then need to beat Chazel le’s ‘ La La Land’ at Feb 19’s WGAs.