A new director has emerged as a contender to win the 2027 Best Director Oscar over Christopher Nolan. Early predictions for the 99th Academy Awards in April had Nolan as the clear frontrunner to take home the golden statuette for his upcoming epic The Odyssey. And it’s admittedly difficult to bet against him, considering that he’s already won the Best Director Oscar for 2024’s Oppenheimer and the grand scale of The Odyssey that has a whopping $250 million budget and a star-studded cast with Matt Damon, Tom Holland, Robert Pattinson, Zendaya, Anne Hathaway, and many more. However, a new picture from Searchlight Pictures with an Oscar-favored director is earning early award buzz.
Martin McDonagh could win 2027 Best Director Oscar over Christopher Nolan
For his work in the upcoming film Wild Horse Nine, Martin McDonagh has become a new challenger for the 2027 Best Director Oscar in early predictions, based on a bet on Kalshi (as of May 26). This is a surprise given that McDonagh only had 2% odds to win the category in April, but the full results show that he is only a few points behind Nolan:
- Christopher Nolan (The Odyssey) – 26%
- Martin McDonagh (Wild Horse Nine) – 23%
- Phil Lord & Christopher Miller (Project Hail Mary) – 12%
- Alejandro G. Iñárritu (Digger) – 11%
- David Fincher (The Adventures of Cliff Booth) – 9%
- Andrew Haigh (A Long Winter) – 8%
- Steven Spielberg (Disclosure Day) – 8%
- Danny Boyle (Ink) – 4%
- Joel Coen (Jack of Spades) – 3%
- Na Hong-jin (Hope) – 2%
- Tie – Less than 1%
While Iñárritu has rightly been added to this list since last month, there are still several directors who still strangely absent. This includes Denis Villeneuve for Dune: Part Three, Olivia Wilde for The Invite, Greta Gerwig for Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew, Ryusuke Hamaguchi for All of a Sudden, and Pawel Pawlikowski for Fatherland (previously named “1949”). In particular, Pawlikowski’s stock has pulled up for recently winning the 2026 Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Director, in a tie with Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi for The Black Ball. The nine-member jury who voted on the award includes actress Demi Moore and Oscar-winning director Chloé Zhao.
For comparison, these options were included in a separate bet on Kalshi on who will be nominated for Best Director at the 2027 Oscars. Here, Nolan is still clearly in the lead at 82%, but McDonagh is in second place at 57% and Villeneuve is not far behind him at 54%. Meanwhile, Spielberg is higher on this list in fourth place with 36% and Pawlikowski is at 34%. This shows that Nolan has some more competitors in the category than originally suggested.
While McDonagh has not yet won an Oscar for Best Director, he is still favored by the Academy. Not only did he take the win for Best Live Action Short Film in 2005 for Six Shooter, he was nominated for Best Director for the 2022 drama The Banshees of Inisherin. He’s also been nominated for Best Original Screenplay for 2008’s In Bruges and both Best Original Screenplay and Best Picture for 2017’s Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.
Set before the Chilean coup in 1973, McDonagh’s Wild Horse Nine follows two CIA officers, Chris (John Malkovich) and Lee (Sam Rockwell), who are assigned by bureau chief MJ (Steve Muscemi) to Easter Island. However, Chris befriends two rebellious students, played by Mariana di Girolamo and Ailín Salas, who could turn the team’s trip upside down. The cast includes Parker Posey as Lee’s wife, Marge, and Tom Waits as Chris’s brother. The movie is set to release on November 6, 2026.
Malkovich, who has never won an Oscar in any category, is one of the frontrunners to win the Best Actor Oscar in 2027 for Wild Horse Nine. However, he will need to contend with Tom Cruise for his performance in Digger.