The Oscars may have concluded, but there’s one more piece of the awards season worth checking out before we fully move on to 2024 in cinema. A welcome annual tradition, the Directors Guild of America gathered their nominees for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Theatrical Feature Film––Martin Scorsese (Killers of the Flower Moon), Christopher Nolan (Oppenheimer), Greta Gerwig (Barbie), Yorgos Lanthimos (Poor Things), Alexander Payne (The Holdovers) and ––for an extensive, nearly two-hour conversation. Moderated by Jeremy Kagan, the conversation took place in February at the DGA’s Los Angeles Theater ahead of Nolan taking home the top award.
The wide-ranging talk dives deep into the preparation and production of each of the features, with Gerwig discussing the intentional dreamlike artificiality of her Barbie sets, Nolan on his fascinating approach of shooting the tower that held the Trinity Test bomb, Scorsese on how Robert De Niro’s real-life injury brought more stillness to Killers of the Flower Moon, Alexander Payne on how Dominic Sessa actually flubbed his first audition, Yorgos Lanthimos on the peculiar rehearsal games he does to warm up his cast, and much more.
Meanwhile, Nolan, who earned upwards of $100 million for Oppenheimer, is zeroing in on his next feature, with Variety reporting he may be revisiting an adaptation of Patrick McGoohan’s 1960s sci-fi spy series The Prisoner, which he’s been attached to for 15 years. The series follows “a British former secret agent who is abducted and held prisoner in a mysterious coastal village resort, where his captors try to find out why he abruptly resigned from his job.” Also in the cards is a new original project he’s going to begin to write now that awards season has wrapped up.
Watch the full conversation below.