Kathryn Bigelow and Tom Hooper are both recent recipients of the DGA Award, having won for The Hurt Locker and The King's Speech, while Ang Lee has twice been honoured - for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Brokeback Mountain - and Steven Spielberg has collected a hat-trick of gongs for The Color Purple, Schindler's Listand Saving Private Ryan. However, it's a first nomination for Ben Affleck, who will be hoping to go one better and secure his first Oscar nod for directing when the Academy announces its nominees on Thursday.
The recipient of the DGA Award has went on to be named Best Director at the Academy Awards for nine years in a row now, and only six times in sixty-four years has the DGA winner failed to replicate the success with an Oscar. However, while twenty-one of the past twenty-five DGA nominees have secured Oscar nominations, you have to go back to 2009 for the last time that all five matched, so Affleck, Bigelow, Hooper, Lee and Spielberg all face an anxious wait over the next couple of days...
The DGA Awards will be presented on Saturday, February 2nd.