Sam Mendes wins Directors Guild top award — will an Oscar be next?
After a big win as best director at the Golden Globes, director Sam Mendes was also honored by the Directors Guild of America.
Mendes won the top award for outstanding directorial achievement in a theatrical feature film for the World War I thriller, "1917."
The 72nd annual DGA Awards were announced Saturday night in a ceremony at the Ritz Carlton in downtown Los Angeles with Judd Apatow as host.
Mendes bested longtime directors Quentin Tarantino, whose "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" took best screenplay and comedy/musical at the Golden Globes, and Martin Scorsese ("The Irishman"), along with first-time nominees Bong Joon-ho ("Parasite") and Taika Waititi ("Jojo Rabbit") in the night's biggest category.
:The DGA Awards are often a strong bellwether for the Academy Awards. In three of the past four years, four of the five nominees also landed Oscar nominations for best director. And since 2014, every DGA winner also won the Academy Award: Alfonso Cuaron for "Gravity" (2014), Alejandro G. Iñárritu for "Birdman" (2015) and "The Revenant" (2016), Damien Chazelle for "La La Land" (2017), Guillermo del Toro for "The Shape of Water" (2018) and Cuaron last year for "Roma."
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Since 2000, only six films have won the DGA but failed to win the best-picture Oscar; in that same time period, there have only been three instances when the DGA winner hasn't also won the best-director Oscar.
At this year's Oscars, Mendes will go up against a similar field in the best director category: Scorsese, Tarantino, Joon-ho and Todd Phillips (“Joker”).
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Other DGA Outstanding Directorial Achievement winners
First-Time Feature Film: Alma Har'el for "Honey Boy"
Dramatic Series: Nicole Kassell for "Watchmen"
Comedy Series: Bill Hader for "Barry"
Variety/Talk/News/Sports – Specials: James Burrows for "All in the Family" and "The Jeffersons" and Andy Fisher for "Live in Front of a Studio Audience"
Movies for Television and Limited Series: Johan Renck for "Chernobyl"
Variety/Talk/News/Sports – Regularly Scheduled Programming: Don Roy King for "Saturday Night Live"
Reality Programs: Jason Cohen for "Encore!"
Children's Programs: Amy Schatz for "Song of Parkland"
Commercials: Spike Jonze for Squarespace and Medmen
Documentary: Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert for "American Factory"
Contributing: Brian Truitt
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: DGA Awards: Sam Mendes wins Directors Guild top award for '1917'
