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With Barbie and Oppenheimer’s combined box office of $1.8 billion (as of writing) paired with cultural cachet and critical praise, Oscars success feels inevitable. Every publication has made their predictions as to how many nominations and wins these two projects will receive. But one of the best ways to predict future wins at this particular awards show is to look to the past. How have the Oscars historically received the two filmmakers’ work? 

It feels most appropriate to start by comparing their early steps into filmmaking. Both started out with extremely low budget independent films: Nolan’s Following (1998) had a budget of £6,000 and Gerwig’s Nights and Weekends(2008) had a budget of merely $15,000. Nolan quickly made Memento (2000) after his debut, while Gerwig did not make her sole directorial debut with Lady Bird (2017) until nearly ten years after Nights and Weekends. Lady Bird and Memento feel the most appropriate to compare– not technically debuts, but what feels like the moment the two auteurs burst into film culture. The two films had similar budgets as well. Memento scored two nominations at the 2002 Academy Awards: Editing and Original Screenplay, losing to Black Hawk Down and Gosford Park respectively. The Editing loss feels particularly egregious looking back. 

Lady Bird received comparatively more recognition from the Academy at the 2018 show, with nominations for Actress (Ronan), Original Screenplay, Director, and Supporting Actress (Metcalf)*. As Nolan did before, Gerwig lost in every category. Personally, while I think Gerwig had the benefit of familiarity with her peers based on her work as an actress in comparison to Nolan, I think she had a tougher debut Oscar year with strong players like Get Out, Call Me by Your Name, Phantom Thread, and Nolan’s own Dunkirk. In addition, Gerwig was competing against ten best picture nominees to Nolan’s five. If the category had been ten nominees at the 2002 show, perhaps Nolan could have squeezed in with Memento. 

One difference between the two indie darlings is the attention paid to Gerwig’s gender. Particular notice was shown to her being the first woman nominated in Director in almost a decade. I think another overlooked triumph of Gerwig’s mere presence in this group of men was the nomination of Lady Bird in Best Picture. While films directed by women are a rarity in this category (only 19 women have directed films that have been nominated for best picture), it’s even rarer to see films directed by women about women in this category. Namely, Nomadland (2020) is the first film directed by a woman with a female protagonist to win Best Picture. 

After their “debuts,” the two take what could be argued as similar paths once again. Nolan directed Batman Begins(2005), digestible IP that he was seen as the savior of, a property the Warner Brothers saw as floundering after the interesting choices of Joel Schumacher. Gerwig directed Little Women (2019), a novel that isn’t IP the same way Batman is but is admittedly a familiar story. I remember the conversations at the time of “why do we need ANOTHER ‘Little Women’ adaptation?” when the Gerwig film was announced (interesting as Batman Begins was the fifth Batman film in 16 years…). Both Nolan and Gerwig breathed new life into their adaptations, with Nolan creating arguably one of the greatest comic book films of all time in his sequel, and Gerwig creating one of the greatest adaptations of Alcott’s 100+ year-old classic. 

Where they diverge, is the Academy’s reception. Nolan walked away with only one nomination for Batman Beginsbut swooped in with 8 nominations for The Dark Knight (2008). On the other hand, the Academy received Little Women with open arms, awarding it five nominations for Actress (Ronan), Supporting Actress (Pugh), Original Score, Adapted Screenplay, and Costume. Gerwig’s film walked away with Costume. Again, she was in a tough year, with the 2020 Oscars featuring strong players like Parasite and Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood. Looking back, her loss for Adapted Screenplay and her being overlooked in Director is frustrating. 

This article is not necessarily about predicting next year’s Oscars. You can see our weekly updates for that. But it is interesting to think about Barbie (2023) as Gerwig’s The Dark Knight (fittingly, as Barbie just passed The Dark Knight as the highest grossing Warner Brother’s project ever). The Dark Knight won two Oscars- one for supporting actor and one for a craft (sound editing). I can see, with the most conservative of predictions, Barbie picking up a similar number of wins. But on a broader scale, The Dark Knight trilogy represented Nolan stepping into the lens of blockbuster filmmaking, with The Dark Knight being the height of his comic book adaptations. Barbie represents Gerwig stepping into a similar field, and bringing the same level of ambition, craft, and thought to her much pinker world. 

The elephant in the room is Nolan’s twelve films to Gerwig’s three. The filmmakers are at very different points in their careers, separated by a decade between their directorial debuts. As a result, Nolan’s history with the Oscars is much longer. After The Dark Knight, Nolan’s relationship with the Oscars can be summed up in three words: crafts, crafts, and crafts. Nolan’s films collectively have racked up nine wins, all but one for below-the-line categories. Nolan is an icon of the crafts. For example, he accepted an Academy Award of Merit at the Academy’s 2013 Scientific and Technical Awards on behalf of film laboratories. At this show, filled with craftspeople, he was greeted by the audience with applause, the atmosphere filled with triumphant glee. While this was not an award for Nolan himself, it paints a picture of the narrative that has been built about Nolan’s career. Five nominations for cinematography (one win), six nominations for production design, eight collective awards for sound mixing & editing (four wins total), four nominations for visual effects (two wins): it’s as if by default Nolan’s films will be recognized in some capacity for this work. Even Tenet (2020), a somewhat divisive film, won for visual effects at the 2021 Oscars.

Gerwig’s films feel like the work of a prodigy, with every film she has directed so far being nominated for Best Picture. Incredibly, Nolan has only been nominated twice for Best Picture. Looking back, overlooking Interstellar at the 2015 Oscars is a huge omission. In terms of personal nominations, it is incredible that Gerwig has not won for Screenplay yet, with the only win for her films being Costume Design. Nolan himself has won zero Oscars for his directing, producing, or writing.

I hope Gerwig’s future doesn’t follow Nolan’s, creating films after film without the Academy making that final bound into actually awarding her that golden statue. Similarly, I hope Nolan is awarded for his writing, producing, and/or directing one day as well. 

*On a personal note, I still wake up in a sweat thinking about Metcalf’s loss.