Director Ridley Scott is back in the Oscars conversation with a film that hearkens back to his biggest Oscar success: “Gladiator II,” the long-awaited sequel to his 2000 Best Picture winner “Gladiator.” But despite the awards success of that 24-year-old blockbuster film, Scott himself didn’t get to go along for the ride. He lost Best Director in one of the most fascinating races that category has ever seen. Scott, now 86, has a chance to receive an overdue trophy and become the oldest filmmaker ever to prevail.
To date, Scott has been nominated for four Oscars. Three of those were for Best Director: “Thelma and Louise” (1991), “Gladiator” and “Black Hawk Down” (2001), though “Gladiator” was the only one of those three films to receive a Best Picture nomination. Helming the Best Picture front-runner that year automatically made him a strong contender to win the award, but he actually didn’t win any major awards leading up to the Oscars. He lost the BAFTA to Ang Lee (“Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”), the Critics Choice Award to Steven Soderbergh (jointly for “Erin Brockovich” and “Traffic”), the Directors Guild Award to Lee and the Golden Globe to Lee.
At those Oscars, Scott and Lee were both nominated, and Soderbergh made history by being nominated twice, making him one of only three filmmakers ever to earn directing bids for two films in the same year (Frank Lloyd and Michael Curtiz were the other two). Despite Lee claiming the industry peer group awards up to that point, though, Soderbergh ended up prevailing for “Traffic.” The academy would make it up to Lee by giving him Best Director trophies for both “Brokeback Mountain” (2005) and “Life of Pi” (2012), but Scott is still waiting.
Scott’s best chance since “Gladiator” was “The Martian” (2015), for which he ran the board with directing nominations from the BAFTAs, Golden Globes, Critics Choice Awards and Directors Guild Awards. Going into Oscar nominations Scott was actually the front-runner to win according to Gold Derby’s odds, but on nominations morning we were shocked to find him missing from the Best Director list entirely. So while he did receive a Best Picture bid as a producer of “The Martian,” his chances of winning were sunk: Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu won the directing award for the second year in a row for “The Revenant,” and “Spotlight” claimed Best Picture.
Now he’s eyeing awards again with “Gladiator II.” As of this writing the film ranks ninth in the Best Picture race with 18/1 odds, putting it in line for a nomination. Scott himself is in seventh place for Best Director with 15/1 odds, though there are two Expert journalists, one Gold Derby Editor and one of our Top 24 Users who think he’ll win at last. Those numbers may yet improve when the film rolls out in the US on November 22, or even earlier than that as members of the press and industry get to preview the sequel and decide if this is the film Scott has been waiting for.
