Oscar predictions: Greta Gerwig (‘Barbie’) inching closer to Best Director top 5 in our odds

Greta Gerwig managed to turn “Barbie,” a film based on a line of dolls, into an unlikely critical and commercial phenomenon. The film achieved great reviews (80 on MetaCritic and 89% freshness on Rotten Tomatoes), and then it had the biggest opening weekend for any film directed by a woman ($162 million in North America). Will those feats be rewarded with an Oscar nomination for Best Director? As of this writing she’s inching closer to that mark.

SEE‘Barbie’ goes to the Oscars: How many of the cast will be invited?

As recently as July 24 Gerwig ranked ninth in our odds for Best Director based on the combined predictions of thousands of Gold Derby users. By July 28 she was in sixth place. She’s in striking distance of the top five, which currently consists of front-runner Martin Scorsese (“Killers of the Flower Moon“), Christopher Nolan (“Oppenheimer”), Celine Song (“Past Lives”), Jonathan Glazer (“The Zone of Interest”), and Denis Villeneuve (“Dune: Part Two”). Villeneuve is in fifth position, but we know he’s vulnerable because he was unexpectedly snubbed from the Best Director category for the first part of “Dune” two years ago.

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If Gerwig is nominated, she would make even more history. She’d be only the second woman ever to have received multiple Best Director nominations in her career. The first was Jane Campion, who was nominated for “The Piano” (1993) and then won for “The Power of the Dog” (2021). And if Gerwig is joined by Celine Song or another female filmmaker, this would be just the second time two women were nominated for Best Director in the same year. The only time that happened was when Chloe Zhao (“Nomadland”) and Emerald Fennell (“Promising Young Woman”) were up for the award together three years ago; Zhao won that prize.

Then of course the question is whether Gerwig can win what would be her first Oscar. Of course, she’d need to get nominated first, but that’s looking more and more like a possibility.

PREDICTthe 2024 Oscar nominations

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