Alfonso Cuaron moved one step closer to a directing Oscar when he was named the winner of the 66th Annual Director’s Guild Award. Cuaron took home the Best Feature Film prize for his work on the film, “Gravity.”
Other winners include Vince Gilligan, for the final episode of “Breaking Bad” for television drama; Steven Soderbergh for HBO’s “Behind the Candelabra” for movie/mini-series for television and Beth McCarthy-Miller for television comedy for the “Hogcock!/Last Lunch” episode of “30 Rock.”
Jehane Noujaim won the prize for best documentary feature for “The Square.”
Cuaron’s win puts makes him the odds on favorite to win the Academy Award for Directing on March 2.
Only seven times in the past has the DGA winner not gone on to win the Oscar:
YEAR DGA WINNER ACADEMY AWARD WINNER
1968 Anthony Harvey – “The Lion in Winter Carol Reed – “Oliver”
1972 Francis Ford Coppola – “The Godfather” Bob Fosse – “Cabaret”
1985 Steven Spielberg – “The Color Purple” Sydney Pollock – “Out of Africa”
1995 Ron Howard – “Apollo 13” Mel Gibson – “Braveheart”
2001 Ang Lee – “Crouching Tiger/Hidden Dragon” Steven Soderbergh – “Traffic”
2003 Rob Marshall – “Chicago” Roman Polanski – “The Pianist”
2012 Ben Affleck – “Argo” Ang Lee – “Life of Pi”
Incredibly, in the year they won the DGA award, Spielberg, Howard and Affleck were not nominated for the Oscar.