2019 Oscar Predictions: BEST DIRECTOR (June) – Spike Lee rebounds; Bradley Cooper’s ‘Star’ rises

Erik Anderson June 18, 2018

Bradley Cooper is strumming his way up the chart with his directorial debut A Star Is Born

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Just as in Best Picture, Spike Lee (BlacKkKlansman from Focus Features) rebounds and lands back in the top spot for June.

Lee’s move pushes last month’s #1 Steve McQueen (20th Century Fox’s Widows) down to #4. Oscar winners Adam McKay (Annapurna’s Backseat), Damien Chazelle (Universal’s First Man) and Barry Jenkins (Annapurna’s If Beale Street Could Talk) stay put in their same spots as May.

Yorgos Lanthimos (Fox Searchlight’s The Favourite) makes the big move though, climbing out of the Next Up section up to #7 on the chart, displacing fellow Fox Searchlight director Marielle Heller for Can You Ever Forgive Me?

Bradley Cooper (Warner Bros. A Star Is Born) ekes closer to the top 5, moving up one to #6 this month. Josie Rourke (Mary Queen of Scots from Focus Features) and Karyn Kusama (Annapurna’s Destroyer) hold on to #9 and #10.

I think there is a lot of potential for a Next Up contender to disrupt this top 10 in the coming months. James Gray’s Ad Astra (from 20th Century Fox) could be his Oscar breakthrough, Ryan Coogler mounted the most successful comic book/superhero movie of all time with Disney’s Black Panther, Mike Leigh is always a formidable Oscar candidate and this year he has Peterloo from Amazon. What if Netflix was able to mount a real campaign for Orson Welles and his finally completed final film The Other Side of the Wind? It seems a near impossible feat but the thought of it is too interesting to not keep in the conversation.

Here are my 2019 Oscar predictions in Best Director for June 18, 2018.

Green – moves up
Red – moves down
Blue – chart debut

1. Spike Lee – BlacKkKlansman

2. Adam McKay – Backseat

3. Damien Chazelle – First Man

4. Steve McQueen – Widows

5. Barry Jenkins – If Beale Street Could Talk

6. Bradley Cooper – A Star is Born

7. Yorgos Lanthimos – The Favourite

8. Marielle Heller – Can You Ever Forgive Me?

9. Josie Rourke – Mary Queen of Scots

10. Karyn Kusama – Destroyer

NEXT UP

James Gray – Ad Astra

Ryan Coogler – Black Panther

Nadine Labaki – Capernaum

Jason Reitman – The Front Runner

Mimi Leder – On the Basis of Sex

Orson Welles – The Other Side of the Wind

Mike Leigh – Peterloo

Alfonso Cuarón – Roma

Pippa Bianco – Untitled Pippa Bianco aka Share

Benh Zeitlin – Wendy

OTHER CONTENDERS

Felix van Groeningen – Beautiful Boy

Bryan Singer – Bohemian Rhapsody

Jon M. Chu – Crazy Rich Asians

Julia Hart – Fast Color

Sebastián Lelio – Gloria Bell

Alice Rohrwacher – Happy as Lazzaro

Ari Aster – Hereditary

Kim Nyugen – The Hummingbird Project

Wes Anderson – Isle of Dogs

Justin Kelly – JT Leroy

Debra Granik – Leave No Trace

Paolo Sorrentino – Loro

Rob Marshall – Mary Poppins Returns

Jonah Hill – Mid 90s

Jennifer Kent – The Nightingale

David Lowery – The Old Man & the Gun

David Mackenzie – Outlaw King

Chloe Zhao – The Rider

Jacques Audiard – The Sisters Brothers

László Nemes – Sunset

Luca Guadagnino – Suspiria

Jason Reitman – Tully

Susanna White – Woman Walks Ahead

Robert Zemeckis – The Women of Marwen

Lynne Ramsay – You Were Never Really Here

2019 Oscar Predictions: BEST PICTURE (June) – ‘BlacKkKlansman’ back on top, ‘The Favourite’ moves up

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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.