Christopher Nolan, the newly elected president of the Directors Guild of America, presided over his first DGA Awards on Saturday night, as he kicked off the ceremony with a passionate speech.
Nolan was elected in September to serve as president of the Hollywood directors union, and returned to its annual awards show in very different fashion than two years ago, when he won the top prize for Oppenheimer.
This time around, he began by showing appreciation to the guild’s board members and telling those in the room, “If you like the way the organization is running and you see things you like, or more importantly if you don’t like the way we’re doing things, please come and get involved… we need as many voices as possible.”
Nolan noted how being a director can be “a lonely profession, and having us all come together on occasions like this is what helps us have strengths together in our conversations and our dealings with the studios. A lot of heavy hitters here tonight.” He joked he wasn’t “supposed to talk too much about business” but took a moment to shout out the negotiations committee, who “have spent many, many months figuring out what’s going on in this crazy world of ours.”
The filmmaker, whose highly anticipated film The Odyssey comes out in July, is leading the union at a very fraught time in Hollywood, as production has slowed, AI is threatening jobs and one Hollywood giant (Netflix) is attempting to swallow another (Warner Bros.). There are also labor negotiations with studios and streamers on the horizon, with discussions expected to begin on May 11, after SAG-AFTRA and the Writers Guild of America initiate their own negotiations.
“Tonight is a celebration of extraordinary work and it should be a very joyful one, but I do want to start by just acknowledging that our members are having very hard times. In 2024, our employment in our guild was down about 40 percent, and that was followed by another decline in ’25,” Nolan continued. “The amount of money that people spend on our work, on entertainment, is very, very stable. Audiences are invested in us, we have to be sure that we’re able to repay that investment.”
“It’s the people in this room that were able to look forward and realize what an audience wants before they even know they wanted it. And no Pam and Mike, I’m not talking about you,” he teased to Warner Bros.’ Pam Abdy and Mike De Luca. “The directors — we are the storytellers, we are the people who have to innovate on the screen and it’s very important that as our industry progresses, as new technologies and new forms of distributions come along, that we are always sensitive to how are our voices being put across, how can we get our messages across, how can we engage with that audience and pay that investment that they continue to give us. The best argument on that is to look at the work represented here tonight.”