Return of the King bags Jackson DGA award
Staff and agencies - Monday February 9, 2004

It was third time lucky for Peter Jackson this weekend, as the director of the Lord of the Rings trilogy won the Directors Guild Award for his huge hit The Return of the King.

Jackson beat Sofia Coppola, Clint Eastwood, Peter Weir and Gary Ross (Seabiscuit) for the award. He had been nominated twice before, for the first two Lord of the Rings instalments, but lost out to Ron Howard for A Beautiful Mind, and last year to Rob Marshall, for Chicago.

The DGA victory makes it even more likely that Jackson will walk away with the Academy Award for best director later this month. In the last 55 years, the winner of the DGA award has gone on to win the Oscar 49 times. However, there have been recent exceptions such as last year, when Marshall subsequently lost out to Roman Polanski. Similarly, Ang Lee won the DGA award in 2001, only to lose out to Steven Soderbergh for the Oscar.

"What really matters most tonight is that it's not really about me," said Jackson. "The director is the person whose
name gets written about the most, but for me I just think of the whole experience as an incredible team effort."