How often does a movie win both director and screenplay Golden Globes?
The Golden Globes nominated five films this year for both director and screenplay. The Globes only offer one screenplay category rather than splitting into two with original and adapted like most other awards groups. This means that if your film gets into this category, they really, really love your writing.
Writing and directing seem like they would be paired together often but the two awards have only been awarded to the same film once in the last decade. That was in 2017 when Damien Chazelle won both awards for “La La Land,” which also won Best Comedy/Musical Picture. The other nine years saw a split. Here’s the breakdown.
In 2014, Spike Jonze won Best Screenplay for “Her” while Alfonso Cuarón emerged victorious in the directing race for “Gravity.” The year later, Richard Linklater took home Best Director for “Boyhood” while four writers won for “Birdman:” Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Nicolás Giacobone, Alexander Dinelaris Jr., and Armando Bo.
Aaron Sorkin won Best Screenplay in 2016 for “Steve Jobs” before somehow missing out on an Oscar nomination while Cuarón’s compatriot, Iñárritu, won Best Director for “The Revenant.” In 2018, Martin McDonagh won Best Screenplay for “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” and Guillermo del Toro won Best Director for “The Shape of Water.”
In 2019, Cuarón won another Globe as he took home Best Director for “Roma.” “Green Book” snagged Best Screenplay that year for writers Nick Vallelonga, Brian Hayes Currie, and Peter Farrelly. Quentin Tarantino was the sole recipient of Best Screenplay in 2020 for “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” while Sam Mendes secured a Best Director victory for “1917.”
Sorkin won another Best Screenplay Globe in 2021 as his script for “The Trial of the Chicago 7” was recognized as the best of the year by the HFPA. Meanwhile, Chloé Zhao won Best Director for “Nomadland.” In 2022, Best Director went to another woman — Jane Campion for “The Power of the Dog” — while Best Screenplay was awarded to Kenneth Branagh for “Belfast.” And, earlier this year, McDonagh won another Best Screenplay award thanks to his “The Banshees of Inisherin” script while Steven Spielberg won Best Director for “The Fabelmans.”
The Globes clearly like to share the love, then, when it comes to these two awards. What does that tell us for this year’s races?
The nominees for Best Director are Christopher Nolan (“Oppenheimer”), Martin Scorsese (“Killers of the Flower Moon”), Greta Gerwig (“Barbie”), Yorgos Lanthimos (“Poor Things”), Celine Song (“Past Lives”), and Bradley Cooper (“Maestro”). Meanwhile, the nominees for Best Screenplay are “Barbie” (Noah Baumbach and Gerwig), “Poor Things” (Tony McNamara), “Oppenheimer” (Nolan), “Past Lives” (Song), “Killers of the Flower Moon” (Eric Roth and Scorsese), and “Anatomy of a Fall” (Justine Triet and Arthur Harari).
That means that five movies could repeat the feat of “La La Land” by winning both awards: “Oppenheimer,” “Barbie,” “Killers of the Flower Moon,” “Poor Things,” and “Past Lives.” However, we are currently predicting different winners in both categories.
We think Nolan will take home his first Golden Globe award by winning Best Director for “Oppenheimer” while we predict that “Barbie” will win Best Screenplay for Baumbach and Gerwig. Another Barbenheimer battle!
It also seems that it is these movies that are most likely to win both awards as both movies are ranked in the top three in each category, the only two films to be placed so highly in both Screenplay and Director. “Killers of the Flower Moon” is in our top three for Best Director but only fifth for Screenplay. Conversely, “Poor Things” is second in Screenplay but fourth for Director. So, we think that “Oppenheimer” and “Barbie” have the best chances of winning for writing and directing but we don’t predict it will happen.
This would be Nolan’s first Globe victory and comes after he was nominated four times prior to “Oppenheimer.” These bids were for Best Screenplay in 2002 for “Memento” (shared with Jonathan Nolan) and in 2011 for “Inception” while he also picked up Best Director bids for “Inception” and for “Dunkirk” in 2018. Gerwig was nominated for Best Screenplay that year for “Lady Bird” while she also previously picked up a bid for Best Comedy/Musical Actress for “Frances Ha,” a Baumbach film. Baumbach’s only other Golden Globe nomination came in 2020 for Best Screenplay for “Marriage Story.”
We think Nolan and Gerwig/Baumbach have great chances at taking home their respective awards. Nine out of the last 10 Best Director winners wrote or co-wrote their film with the exception being Iñárritu and “The Revenant,” which was written by Mark L. Smith. The other nine winners were all writer-directors like Nolan, showing the Globes like that sort of artist. It’s the same story in the Best Screenplay race: nine out of the last 10 winners also directed their film. The exception here is Sorkin, who wrote “Steve Jobs” but didn’t direct it (Danny Boyle did). The other nine were also writer-directors, so that is good news for Gerwig, who helmed “Barbie.”
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