The Directors Guild of America (DGA) handed out their annual awards and, to absolutely no surprise to anyone, Alfonso Cuaron was this year’s theatrical motion picture recipient for his work on Gravity, essentially paving his path to victory at the Oscars. Cuaron bested fellow Oscar nominees Steve McQueen (12 Years a Slave), David O. Russell (American Hustle) and Martin Scorsese (The Wolf of Wall Street) as well as Paul Greengrass (Captain Phillips) for this year’s prize.
As always, the DGA loves to remind us how their winner each year is the best indicator of who will win the Oscar and since Ben Affleck wasn’t nominated last year the Academy made up for it by awarding Argo Best Picture. Now, with Gravity tying 12 Years a Slave at the Producers Guild Awards many are beginning to already wonder if Cuaron’s DGA wins is the first major step toward a Best Picture win for the technical marvel that doesn’t live up to its visual wonder in the narrative department.
[amz asin=”B00H83EUL2″ size=”small”]Of course, this would be a great opportunity for the Academy to award a populist film as Gravity is the highest grossing domestic release of the year’s nominees and has made over $678.4 million worldwide thus far. In fact, should Gravity win the Oscar for Best Picture it would be the highest grossing domestic release ($259.6 million so far) since The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King ($377m) in 2004.
Personally, I still have 12 Years a Slave taking the top prize though that’s beginning to feel a little wobbly… I may have to switch to Gravity by Monday’s Oscar update. However, I will be keeping Cuaron atop my Best Director predictions.
That said, you can browse all of my Oscar predictions right here and I have already updated the Oscar Overture with Cuaron’s win tonight. You can check out my precursor chart right here.
