Daniels win big at the Directors Guild Awards, raising Everything Everywhere’s Oscar chances

Anyone hoping to go into this year’s Academy Awards ceremony totally fresh should cover their eyes and ears right about now, because this may be a spoiler for one of the major categories: Everything Everywhere All At Once directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, a.k.a. Daniels, won the Outstanding Directorial Achievement In Theatrical Feature Film award at Saturday night’s Directors Guild Awards, which means there’s a very, very good chance that they’ll win the Best Director Oscar on March 12.

After all, the DGAs and the Oscars have only diverged eight times in the last 74 years, and that kind of streak makes the DGAs a lot more relevant than they otherwise might be. Why break it now? That’s, like, the main thing that the Directors Guild Awards have going for them. Then again, this year’s Directors Guild Awards did diverge from a previous trend already, since the last two winners of the top prize were women (Chloé Zhao and Jane Campion) and this year there weren’t even any women nominated in the category (for whatever reason, the list also didn’t include James Cameron or Baz Luhrmann).

Daniels defeated Todd Field, Joseph Kosinski, Martin McDonagh, and Steven Spielberg for that win, and over in the first-time feature director category, Aftersun’s Charlotte Wells beat Alice Diop, Audrey Diwan, John Patton Ford, and Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic. The TV categories had some twists, with last year’s drama winner Succession not airing any new episodes in 2022—leaving Sam Levinson to win for fellow HBO series Euphoria—and last year’s comedy winner Hacks didn’t make the list. Instead, that prize went to Bill Harder for the Barry episode “710N.” The crossover category covering TV movies and limited series went to Helen Shaver for Station Eleven.