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Paul Thomas Anderson Wins Best Director for ‘One Battle After Another’ at 2026 Academy Awards

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While everyone has been trying to pinpoint who will win Best Lead Actor and Actress at the 2026 Academy Awards, some fans have been more focused on the race for Best Director. The award itself is rich in history, and there have been some incredible wins in recent years, such as Christopher Nolan finally winning for his work on Oppenheimer. He could even be in line for another nomination and maybe another win for his work directing The Odyssey this summer. There have been some shocking wins and losses in the Best Director category over the years, including John Madden winning for Shakespeare in Love in 1999, in a year when many felt Steven Spielberg should have claimed gold for Saving Private Ryan. Even Kathryn Bigelow winning for The Hurt Locker came as a surprise, especially considering that James Cameron’s Avatar came out the same year.

This year’s roster of talent competing for Best Director is as strong as it’s ever been, with Ryan Coogler earning his first nomination for his work directing the critically acclaimed vampire horror hit, Sinners. Previous winner of the award, Chloé Zhao, has also been recognized for her work directing Hamnet, the historical epic starring Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley. Josh Safdie has earned his first nomination for directing Marty Supreme, the Timothée Chalamet-starring ping pong biopic brought to the big screen by A24. Paul Thomas Anderson has earned his fourth Best Directing Oscar for helming One Battle After Another, and Joachim Trier has been recognized for directing Sentimental Value. The Academy decided to give the award to Paul Thomas Anderson for directing One Battle After Another, which surprisingly marks the legendary filmmaker’s first-ever Academy Award for Best Director, and his second Oscar ever after winning Best Adapted Screenplay earlier in the night.

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Collider Exclusive · Oscar Best Picture Quiz
Which Oscar Best Picture
Is Your Perfect Movie?

Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country

Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be — and what it can do to you. One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one.

🪜Parasite

🌀Everything Everywhere

☢️Oppenheimer

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🐦Birdman

🪙No Country for Old Men

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01

What kind of film experience do you actually want?
The best movies don’t just entertain — they leave something behind.





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02

Which idea grabs you most in a film?
Great films are driven by a central obsession. What’s yours?





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03

How do you like your story told?
Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means.





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04

What makes a truly great antagonist?
The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you?





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05

What do you want from a film’s ending?
The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like?





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06

Which setting pulls you in most?
Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what’s even possible.





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07

What cinematic craft impresses you most?
Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable.





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08

What kind of main character do you root for?
The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you.





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09

How do you feel about a film that takes its time?
Pace is a choice. Some films sprint; others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately.





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10

What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema?
The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want?





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The Academy Has Decided
Your Perfect Film Is…

Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works.

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Parasite

You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it’s ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.

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Everything Everywhere All at Once

You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn’t want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it’s about.

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Oppenheimer

You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort.

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Birdman

You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it’s about. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor’s ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn’t be possible. Michael Keaton’s performance and Emmanuel Lubezki’s restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all.

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No Country for Old Men

You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be.

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From Harvey Dent to the President: The Films of Aaron Eckhart — The Collider Movie Quiz!

Aaron Eckhart has played a wide array of roles in his 30+ year career. How many of these movies do you know?

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Who Will Be Nominated for Best Director in 2027?

It’s too early to know who will be nominated for Best Director in 2027, but there are a few favorites who are likely to be recognized. Early word is that Phil Lord and Christopher Miller will earn a nomination for their work directing Project Hail Mary, and Steven Spielberg could easily earn a nod for his return to sci-fi with Disclosure Day. Denis Villeneuve will also likely be recognized for directing the third Dune movie later this year. Other potential nominees will become clearer throughout the year as more films are released.

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Stay tuned to Collider for more updates and coverage of the 2026 Oscars.


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Release Date
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April 18, 2025

Runtime

138 minutes

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Director

Ryan Coogler

Writers
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Ryan Coogler

Producers

Sev Ohanian, Zinzi Coogler, Ryan Coogler

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