Oscars 2024: will Christopher Nolan win Best Director award for Oppenheimer, has he been nominated before?

Oppenheimer director Christopher Nolan is one of the best film directors, screenwriters, and producers around today not to have won an Oscar for any aspect of his work.

He is up for three Academy Awards this year, the most nominations he has ever received for one film. Following the smash success that was Oppenheimer, Nolan has been nominated in the categories of Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay.

Often, the big budget blockbusters that are Nolan's bread and butter do well at the box office but don't get much recognition at the awards shows - but Oppenheimer has dominated at the Golden Globes and Baftas, and is also expected to pick up multiple gongs at the Oscars this weekend.

Will Christopher Nolan win Best Director Oscar?

Christopher is tipped to win his first Oscar this year - OddsChecker has him as the heavy favourite to win the Best Director gong with chances, with American odds of  -3300, meaning that you’d need to stake £2,000 to return £100 on top of the stake. This equates to a 95% chance for Nolan to win, with Yorgos Lanthimos coming in a very distant second with just 3.7% for Poor Things.

Oppenheimer is an even heavier favourite to win Best Picture with -5000 (98%), but in the Best Adapted Screenplay category, Nolan is not the favourite - Cord Jefferson is favourite to win on -189 (53%), with Nolan second favourite with a 40% chance of success.

Has Christopher Nolan been nominated for an Oscar before?

Prior to the 2024 Oscars, Nolan had been nominated for five Academy Awards for three different films.

He was first nominated in 2002 for Best Original Screenplay for Memento, which he also directed - he lost out on the award to Julian Fellowes who wrote Gosford Park.

Nolan got two more nods in 2011 for Inception for mind bending drama Inception - for Best Picture and Original Screenplay but was unable to convert the nominations into wins, with The King’s Speech, written by David Seidler, taking both the awards.

Nolan’s first Best Director Oscar nomination came in 2018 for Dunkirk, for which he also received another Best picture nod. Again, he missed out on both awards - Guillermo del Toro took the flowers in both categories with The Shape of Water.