With the official announcement of the 2022 Oscars nominations, director Steven Spielberg has now broken his own phenomenal record for the Academy Awards with West Side Story. Spielberg’s films have had a long, successful history at the Oscars, beginning with Jaws’ nomination for Best Picture in 1976, though the auteur was snubbed for Best Director. Since 1977’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Spielberg has personally received an incredible 19 Oscars nominations, with 8 nods for Best Director and 11 producing nominations for Best Picture.

Steven Spielberg’s 2021 adaptation of West Side Story, which notably bombed at the box office but received widespread critical acclaim, has been nominated for seven Academy Awards at the 2022 Oscars. West Side Story’s Oscars nods include Best Supporting Actress for Ariana DeBose, Best Production Design, Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, Best Sound, Best Picture, and Best Director for Spielberg. Aside from West Side Story already setting the record for being Steven Spielberg’s first musical genre film, the movie’s award nominations have broken the director’s own record at the Oscars.

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West Side Story’s Oscar nomination for Best Director has broken the record for nominations across the most decades. Steven Spielberg is now the first person to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director in six different decades, with the previous record being a tie between Spielberg and The Irishman's Martin Scorsese for Best Director nods in five different decades. Steven Spielberg has been nominated for the Best Director Oscar in the 1970s with Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the 1980s with Raiders of the Lost Ark and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, the 1990s with Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan, the 2000s with Munich, the 2010s with Lincoln, and now the 2020s with West Side Story.

Blended image showing Steven SPielberg and the cast of WSS

While Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese have been neck-and-neck for Best Director nominations in the most decades since the 1970s, the former has finally pulled ahead with West Side Story’s 2022 Oscars nod. That said, Martin Scorsese has the opportunity to redeem the title and once again tie with Spielberg at the 2023 ceremony if he receives the Best Director nomination for the upcoming 2022 film Killers of the Flower Moon. Spielberg’s nomination also puts him one closer to Scorsese’s total record, with the Goodfellas director holding nine nominations compared to Spielberg’s eight. If Spielberg earns the award for Best Director at the 2022 Academy Awards, he’ll hold three wins for the category, being one step closer to John Ford’s Oscars record of four wins.

Aside from his incredible Best Director achievement, Steven Spielberg has set another Oscars record with West Side Story’s Best Picture nomination. As the producer of West Side Story, Spielberg is now the first person in Oscars history to earn 11 nominations for Best Picture at the Academy Awards. Again, Spielberg's achievement with 2021's West Side Story sees the filmmaker breaking his own Oscars feat, as he had previously held the record for 10 producing nominations with The Post in 2018. At the 2022 Oscars, Steven Spielberg is up against Paul Thomas Anderson, Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Kenneth Branagh, and Jane Campion for the Best Director award.

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