Gold Rush Gang 2016 Oscar Predictions: BEST DIRECTOR (August)

David O. Russell (Joy) is still riding high on the horse as he maintains his #1 status with the Gold Rush Gang’s Best Director predictions for the third month in a row and again by a very large margin; over 20 points ahead of his nearest competitor. That nearest competitor is Todd Haynes (Carol), who manages to move up a bit in the rankings and vote totals a bit despite his film taking a small hit in Best Picture.

It’s begging for scraps for the next five directors, who only manage 10-17 votes apiece. Ahead of that pack is Tom Hooper (The Danish Girl), who’s film made a huge jump in Best Picture. Tied for 4th place are Steven Spielberg (Bridge of Spies), who manages to hang on even though his film plummeted to 8th in Best Picture, and Beast of No Nation‘s Cary Fukunaga. Fukunaga, like his film, breaks into the top 5 for the first time and looks to be a place he’ll be staying for a while. Props again to Kenneth Polischuk for being Fukunaga’s earliest supporter in the Gold Rush Gang.

This puts former top 5 players Alejandro G. Iñárritu (The Revenant) and Sarah Gavron (Suffragette) struggling to stay alive and Youth‘s Paolo Sorrentino losing steam as well. Can Danny Boyle (Steve Jobs) or Quentin Tarantino (The Hateful Eight) make a comeback in the coming months? With Steve Jobs out in October and the film hitting the New York Film Festival this fall, Boyle seems like a good bet to show up again soon.

Don’t forget, you can always get up to the minute Oscar predictions from the Gold Rush Gang on our 2016 Oscar Prediction Charts:

BEST PICTURE
BEST ACTOR
BEST ACTRESS
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
BEST FILM EDITING
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN
BEST COSTUME DESIGN
BEST MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING
BEST ORIGINAL SCORE
BEST SOUND EDITING
BEST SOUND MIXING
BEST ANIMATED FEATURE
BEST VISUAL EFFECTS

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Erik Anderson

Erik Anderson is the founder/owner and Editor-in-Chief of AwardsWatch and has always loved all things Oscar, having watched the Academy Awards since he was in single digits; making lists, rankings and predictions throughout the show. This led him down the path to obsessing about awards. Much later, he found himself in film school and the film forums of GoldDerby, and then migrated over to the former Oscarwatch (now AwardsDaily), before breaking off to create AwardsWatch in 2013.

He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Hollywood Critics Association (HCA) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.

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