Christopher Nolan (‘Oppenheimer’) will break BAFTAs curse

Christopher Nolan is one of Britain’s best filmmaking exports, having made many movies adored by fans and critics alike. “Memento,” “The Prestige,” “The Dark Knight,” “Inception,” “Interstellar,” and “Dunkirk” all wowed cinema fans and he continued his hot streak with another epic — this time in the form of Universal’s historical biopic “Oppenheimer.”

The film follows Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer in his quest to create the atomic bomb while he gets caught up in the political machinations of Robert Downey Jr.’s Lewis Strauss. “Oppenheimer” is currently predicted to do well at the Oscars but how about on Nolan’s home soil?

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Nolan has never won a BAFTA. His first three nominations all came in 2011 for “Inception,” for Best Picture (shared with Emma Thomas), Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay. Nolan and Thomas lost Best Picture to “The King’s Speech,” while Nolan lost his writing bid to “The King’s Speech” scribe David Seidler. David Fincher won Best Director at the BAFTAs that year, for “The Social Network.” Nolan then picked up two more BAFTA bids in 2018, both for “Dunkirk,” for Best Picture (again, shared with Thomas) and Best Director. “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” won Best Picture while Guillermo del Toro won Best Director for “The Shape of Water.”

Nolan has since added a further three nominations to his name with “Oppenheimer,” bringing his total to eight BAFTA bids. He’s nominated for Best Picture (with Thomas and Charles Roven), Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay. Let’s go through each of them.

Firstly, Nolan adapted Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin‘s non-fiction book “American Prometheus” into his epic. His script is nominated alongside “All of Us Strangers” (Andrew Haigh), “American Fiction” (Cord Jefferson), “Poor Things” (Tony McNamara), and “The Zone of Interest” (Jonathan Glazer). Currently, we are predicting McNamara to win this category for “Poor Things” so no BAFTA for Nolan just yet. He is, however, in second place in our BAFTA odds chart here.

The filmmakers up for Best Director alongside Nolan are Bradley Cooper (“Maestro”), Glazer (“The Zone of Interest”), Haigh (“All of Us Strangers”), Alexander Payne (“The Holdovers”), and Justine Triet (“Anatomy of a Fall”). Glazer and Triet have decent odds here in second and third place, respectively, but Nolan is the clear favorite.

Lastly, Best Picture. “Oppenheimer” is up against “Anatomy of a Fall” (producers Marie-Ange Luciani and David Thion), “The Holdovers” (producer Mark Johnson), “Killers of the Flower Moon” (producers Dan Friedkin, Daniel Lupi, Martin Scorsese, and Bradley Thomas), and “Poor Things” (producers Ed Guiney, Yorgos Lanthimos, Andrew Lowe, and Emma Stone).

Again, “Anatomy of a Fall” is in closest to second place, this time alongside “Poor Things,” but Nolan and “Oppenheimer” are the clear favorites here. We are predicting Nolan to win both Best Director and Best Picture for “Oppenheimer,” following in the footsteps of multiple filmmakers. At the last 10 BAFTA ceremonies, Best Picture and Best Director have been won by the same artist on six occasions. They were: Jane Campion in 2022 for “The Power of the Dog,” Chloé Zhao in 2021 for “Nomadland,” Sam Mendes in 2020 for “1917,” Alfonso Cuarón in 2019 for “Roma,” Alejandro González Iñárritu in 2016 for “The Revenant,” and Richard Linklater in 2015 for “Boyhood.”

There have been two instances where the same film won both awards but the prizes were handed out to different people. In 2023, “All Quiet on the Western Front” won both Best Picture and Best Director but producer Malte Grunert won the former category, and helmer Edward Berger won the directing category. Similarly, “La La Land” won both awards in 2017 but Fred Berger, Jordan Horowitz, and Marc Plat won for producing the film and Damien Chazelle won for directing it.

There have only been two instances where two separate films won Best Picture and Best Director. “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” won Best Picture in 2018 while del Toro won Best Director for “The Shape of Water.” In 2014, “12 Years a Slave” won Best Picture and Cuarón won Best Director for “Gravity.”

This proves that BAFTA like rewarding auteurs who take their films from concept to theaters. Nolan fits that bill and, after years of missing the BAFTA boat, it looks like a case of London buses for the British filmmaker — you wait so long for one, two come along at once.

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