Anderson

Paul Thomas Anderson’s darkly comedic action-thriller “One Battle After Another” won the top prize at the Producers Guild Awards on Saturday, continuing its dominating run through awards season.

The PGA honor, presented at a ceremony in Beverly Hills, cements Anderson’s celebrated film as the front-runner for the best picture Oscar. Since 2009, when both the Producers Guild and the motion picture academy expanded their best picture nominee slates from five to 10 and adopted a preferential ballot, the PGA winner has gone on to win best picture all but three times.

The last time the groups diverged came six years ago when PGA winner “1917” lost the Oscar to Bong Joon Ho’s “Parasite,” a film that surged in momentum in the weeks leading up to the 2020 Oscars.

No other movie this season has shown that kind of strength other than Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners,” which scored a record-breaking 16 Oscar nominations in January. However, “One Battle” has prevailed at the major ceremonies since then, winning best picture at the British Academy Film Awards last week and Anderson taking the top honor with the Directors Guild earlier this month.

“Sinners” has one more chance to reverse the tide. It will compete against “One Battle After Another” for the cast award at the Actor Awards on Sunday. That ensemble honor, the most prestigious prize handed out by SAG-AFTRA voters, isn’t as strong a precursor as the PGA’s best film. But “Parasite” did win it right before the 2020 Oscars.

Hope springs eternal. Oscar voting ends on Thursday.

Read the full list of 2026 Producers Guild Award winners below.

Darryl F. Zanuck Award (outstanding theatrical motion picture): “One Battle After Another”

Outstanding animated theatrical motion picture: “KPop Demon Hunters”

Norman Felton Award (outstanding episodic television — drama): “The Pitt”

Danny Thomas Award (outstanding episodic television — comedy): “The Studio”

David L. Wolper Award (outstanding limited or anthology series): “Adolescence”

Outstanding televised or streamed motion picture: “John Candy: I Like Me”

Outstanding nonfiction television: “Pee-wee as Himself”

Outstanding live entertainment, variety, sketch, standup and talk series: “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert”

Outstanding game and competition television: “The Traitors”

Outstanding documentary film: “My Mom Jayne”

Outstanding children’s program: “Sesame Street”

Outstanding sports program: “Formula 1: Drive to Survive”

Outstanding short form program: ” Adolescence: The Making of Adolescence”

PGA Innovation Award: “The Wizard of Oz at Sphere”

David O. Selznick Award: Amy Pascal

Milestone Award: Jason Blum

Norman Lear Award: Mara Brock Akil

When the pandemic hit, and reality settled in that life would be isolated and mostly inside, Grammy winner Anderson .Paak found himself on the outside looking in, in a way he didn’t anticipate. “I was the odd man out. My son was 8, and BTS took over the whole house,” .Paak explained in an interview with The Times at his WeHo lounge, Andy’s. “It was a K-pop storm. Before that, me and my son were bonding off of my music.”

.Paak’s son, Soul Rasheed, and his now ex-wife originally from Korea, Jaylyn Chang, had become obsessed with K-pop alongside much of America, which reminded .Paak of the intensity of Beatlemania. Black American music influenced the birth of a new style, which formed and expanded across oceans, then returned to the U.S. and exploded. This effect in the .Paak household was palpable, causing Soul and Chang to deeply bond in a new way. .Paak himself, as a soul, R&B and hip-hop aficionado, was tapped into the source, but not the reinterpreted subject. So he had to find a way in.

Soul, at the time, like many 8-year-olds, had also become obsessed with becoming a YouTuber. Besides .Paak’s music, the father-and-son duo had also previously connected over humor, so .Paak started there. They began with funny skits and eventually fused them with BTS dances. Soon, there were even videos featuring them comedically educating each other about their individual music tastes. “I loved it,” .Paak recalled, getting lost in the memory. “I was getting to know him more, and he was getting to know me. My mom would always say, ‘It’s one thing for your kids to love you, but it’s another to share things you’re interested in.’ It wasn’t like I was being Anderson .Paak, I was just Dad.”

“I was getting to know him more, and he was getting to know me,” .Paak said of bonding with his son, Soul.

(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)

Through this exploration and the realization of a potential continued familial bond, a story idea emerged, then a treatment for a K-pop-centered film that .Paak would direct and he and Soul would both star in. .Paak then began directing a slew of music videos as the pandemic began to fade, building a portfolio and gaining experience in the medium. But he could start to sense Soul’s interest fading as time passed. After a few failed pitch attempts, .Paak urgently enlisted the help of one of his oldest friends and fellow entertainer, Jonnie “Dumbfoundead” Park, who brought .Paak and the idea to Stampede Ventures.

“The pitch was from an idea that Anderson had, and [to introduce it], we showed them this TikTok that he had with his son,” Park recalled over Zoom. “Anderson was like, ‘Do you know anything about BET, son?’ And [Soul] was like, ‘No, but I know BTS.’ Then they were just going back and forth, arguing about BET and BTS. That was literally the deck, [us saying] we would take that energy and put it into a two-hour film. They loved it. As soon as we walked out of the office, Anderson looked over like, ‘Are we greenlit?!’ They just understood it, the whole intergenerational, intercultural element of Black and Korean.” Stampede combined forces on the project with Live Nation Studios and .Paak’s debut feature “K-Pops!” was off to the races.

It’s important to note that .Paak is himself Black and Korean. His mother was adopted from Korea by a SoCal Black American military family and .Paak’s father was also a Black military officer. Thus, while his mother was born in Korea, he was raised almost entirely within a Black cultural space. .Paak didn’t experience much direct exposure to Korean culture until his 20s, when he met Chang at the Musicians Institute in Hollywood. As an immigrant directly from Korea, Chang showed him the fortitude of structure amid her community. He was also taken by their inherent family value system. “In Korean households, you stay in the house until you get older so you can take care of your parents, and your parents can help take care of the kids,” .Paak explained. “There’s an infrastructure that’s worked out. Also, Korean food is important, as is learning the language. I was drawn to that. My son didn’t eat anything outside of Korean food for so long, and he’s just now getting into tacos.”

.Paak then further explored his Korean side through a burgeoning friendship with Park, which happened a bit later, after Chang had already given birth to Soul. Park introduced .Paak to K-town-based Korean culture through their shared music scene. “The people that came from K-town had a lot of Latino and Black influences as well,” .Paak remembered. “There was a little more of a melting pot, and it was more urban. But in a similarly communal way [to Koreans from Korea], they were all hanging out in K-town with other Korean friends. They’d drink soju, and go to after-hours where you had to have somebody Korean with you.”

While .Paak had some opportunities in adulthood to grasp a bit of his Korean heritage, in “K-Pops!,” through his main character BJ, he also got to actualize what his mother may have missed. In the film, BJ, a failed karaoke bar R&B musician, gets a lucky chance to go to Korea and be the drummer for a popular K-pop competition series. There, he bumps into his estranged ex-girlfriend’s son, Tae Young (played by Soul), who is competing on the show. He then finds out that the kid is his. While a messy transition ensues, BJ and Tae Young eventually get to galavant around Korea and work together to try to win the competition. Through this exploration, BJ finds out he can thrive in Korea while still holding onto his Blackness. .Paak’s mother’s dive back into her roots had a different result. “My mom went abroad and spent a year in Korea, but when she went there, she just didn’t like it,” .Paak explained. “In the movie, initially, BJ doesn’t really have any connection to his Korean side and doesn’t really care to know, but then he finds a bridge.” That bridge is music.

Actor Yvette Nicole Brown, who in “K-Pops!” plays BJ’s mother, proclaimed over Zoom that, “Everything about the film and the music in it is Blasian, every culture is celebrated and massaged and made into something beautiful.” .Paak made a concerted, intentional effort to explore both the Black and Korean sides of K-pop in two scenes.

The first is an early breakdown initiated by Soul’s character, Tae Young, who explains the structured roles of a K-pop group, which may be fun for superfans and educational for laypeople to the genre. The next is a winding presentation by BJ to Tae Young about the influence of Motown groups like the Jackson 5 and boy bands like New Edition on the momentum of K-pop’s rise. It’s particularly poignant because it is all shot at a record store on the streets of Korea, where .Paak explained he actually found the records he was referencing. “There’s nothing wrong with people doing their interpretation of Black music, as long as you pay homage and as long as you respect it and take care of it,” .Paak declared. “Because [if you do], then they’ll take care of you, but the moment you don’t, you’ll see what happens … I wanted to explain that history because that’s how I saw it.”

Real-life father and son, Anderson .Paak, left, and Soul Rasheed, co-star in “K-Pops!”

(Jake Giles Netter)

”K-Pops!” has as much of who .Paak and Soul are as father and son as he could fit in. There are appearances by legacy Black artists like Earth, Wind & Fire, as well as K-pop stars like Vernon from Seventeen. There are original songs co-written and co-produced by .Paak and musician Dem Jointz, that feature K-pop fused with soul and funk, one of which Tae Young performs as his finale competition number (soundtrack arriving soon). The film was shot in both L.A. and Korea and provided ample time for bonding (especially during scenes filled with off-the-cuff humor) that .Paak envisioned from the beginning. Yet still, at the time they were about to shoot, .Paak almost couldn’t get Soul on board because he had turned 11 and wasn’t as into K-pop or acting comedically anymore; he insisted he was instead “into Slipknot.”

The duo did find their footing, though, and executed a winding story that centers on their connection. As a burgeoning teenager in 2024, Soul went with his father to the world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, along with a plethora of Korean relatives from his mom’s side. .Paak anxiously awaited their full reaction to the culmination of his quest for a deeper bond.

“Everybody really enjoyed it,” .Paak remembered, relieved. “[Soul] was like, ‘I’m proud of you, Dad.’ I asked him, ‘You think you would ever do part two?’ He was like, ‘Nah, I don’t think acting is my passion, but I’ll never forget those moments … You know what? On second thought, it depends on the script.’ But I think he’s really proud of it. I think it’s something like, when he gets older, he’ll see how special it is as well. But yeah, he didn’t say it’s cringe.”

“K-Pops!” has its L.A. premiere on Tuesday and debuts in select theaters Friday.

CNN anchor Anderson Cooper is walking away from his second job at “60 Minutes” in the latest sign of upheaval at the storied news magazine.

Cooper said in a statement Monday he is leaving the CBS News program because he wants to spend more time with his two young children. He joined the program in 2007 while maintaining his role as prime-time anchor at CNN.

“Being a correspondent at ’60 Minutes’ has been one of the great honors of my career,” Cooper said. “I got to tell amazing stories, and work with some of the best producers, editors and camera crews in the business. For nearly 20 years, I’ve been able to balance jobs at CNN and CBS, but I have little kids now and I want to spend as much time with them as possible, while they want to spend time with me.”

Cooper’s departure could be the first of a number of changes for “60 Minutes” as Bari Weiss, who joined CBS News as editor-in-chief last October, is expected to substantially overhaul the prestigious news magazine.

Cooper, 58, was courted for the anchor role at “CBS Evening News” last year before the network parted ways with the anchor duo of Maurice DuBois and John Dickerson. Cooper signed a new deal with CNN instead, and CBS News gave the anchor job to Tony Doukopil.

This is a developing story.

In a widely anticipated outcome that felt like a long-overdue coronation, Paul Thomas Anderson won the top honor at Saturday’s Directors Guild of America Awards for his Thomas Pynchon-inspired political thriller “One Battle After Another.” The ceremony was held at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills.

It was the director’s first DGA win after two prior nominations, in 2008 for “There Will Be Blood” and in 2022 for his San Fernando Valley reminiscence “Licorice Pizza.”

Speaking at the podium after receiving the award from last year’s winner, “Anora” director Sean Baker, a humbled Anderson thanked the guild, mentioning recent EGOT winner Steven Spielberg, sitting in the audience right in front of him. “It reminds me, being in this room, of ‘Close Encounters,’ ” Anderson said. “We’re all brought here for a reason — some cosmic thing brought us to this room. It was that call to the mountain. It’s that feeling that we all love making s— and we need to do it.”

Anderson also devoted much of his speech to remembering his first-assistant director Adam Somner, who died from thyroid cancer in November 2024. “May you be blessed with the relationship I had with him,” the director said, “and if you have one already, hold them close and remind them that you love them.”

True to tradition, the evening was both a celebration of achievements in directing and an occasion for much pro-guild testifying — from nominees, winners and Christopher Nolan, presiding over his first ceremony as DGA president. “We are the best at what we do,” Nolan said, touching on last year’s 40% dip in DGA member employment with a note of solidarity and urgency. “We are the storytellers. We are the people who have to innovate.”

All five nominees for theatrical feature film are invited to give a speech during these annual awards, with the eventual winner speaking twice. Guillermo del Toro, up for his personal take on “Frankenstein,” saluted Nolan: “I love saying ‘President Nolan’ because it’s so good to say ‘President’ with a good word after it,” he cracked to hearty applause. (The joke was echoed by several podium speakers.)

Ryan Coogler, a DGA nominee for “Sinners,” thanked the guild for his health insurance and mentioned his longtime dream — not of filmmaking but of joining a union, like some of the adults in his life growing up.

“Lately I’ve been learning about alchemy, “ said Chloé Zhao, representing “Hamnet,” her domestic drama about the grief-stricken family life of William Shakespeare. “You need fire and you need a chalice. To me, that fire is my creativity. It’s my birthright to create. And that chalice is the community that holds me.”

Indicating the respect the DGA commands among actors, several A-listers attended the ceremony to introduce their directors: Leonardo DiCaprio for Anderson, Jacob Elordi for Del Toro and Timothée Chalamet, the latter celebrating his “Marty Supreme” director Josh Safdie with sincerity and gentle deprecation. “I don’t think Josh will ever be ‘institutional,’ ” Chalamet said. “I think Josh will forever be an insurgent filmmaker and I don’t think the world would be right otherwise.”

An Oscar victory path is now clear for Anderson, previously nominated for the academy’s directing honor three times, for “There Will Be Blood,” “Phantom Thread” and “Licorice Pizza,” but never a winner. Twenty of the last 23 recipients of the DGA’s top prize have gone on to take the Oscar for directing.

Here is a complete list of the night’s nominees, with winners in bold:

Outstanding directorial achievement in theatrical feature film

Paul Thomas Anderson, “One Battle After Another” (Warner Bros. Pictures)
Ryan Coogler, “Sinners” (Warner Bros. Pictures)
Guillermo del Toro, “Frankenstein” (Netflix)
Josh Safdie, “Marty Supreme” (A24)
Chloé Zhao, “Hamnet” (Focus Features)

Michael Apted Award for outstanding directorial achievement in first-time theatrical feature film

Charlie Polinger, “The Plague” (Independent Film Co.)
Hasan Hadi, “The President’s Cake” (Sony Pictures Classics)
Harry Lighton, “Pillion” (A24)
Alex Russell, “Lurker” (Mubi)
Eva Victor, “Sorry, Baby” (A24)

Outstanding directorial achievement in documentary

Mstyslav Chernov, “2000 Meters to Andriivka” (PBS)
Geeta Gandbhir, “The Perfect Neighbor” (Netflix)
Sara Khaki and Mohammadreza Eyni, “Cutting Through Rocks” (Assembly Releasing)
Elizabeth Lo, “Mistress Dispeller” (Oscilloscope Laboratories)
Laura Poitras and Mark Obenhaus, “Cover-Up” (Netflix)

Outstanding directorial achievement in dramatic series

Amanda Marsalis, “The Pitt,” “6:00 P.M.” (HBO Max)
Liza Johnson, “The Diplomat,” “Amagansett” (Netflix)
Janus Metz, “Andor,” “Who Are You?” (Disney+)
Ben Stiller, “Severance,” “Cold Harbor” (Apple TV+)
John Wells, “The Pitt,” “7:00 A.M.” (HBO Max)

Outstanding directorial achievement in comedy series

Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, “The Studio,” “The Oner” (Apple TV+)
Lucia Aniello, “Hacks,” “A Slippery Slope” (HBO Max)
Janicza Bravo, “The Bear,” “Worms” (FX on Hulu)
Christopher Storer, “The Bear,” “Bears” (FX on Hulu)
Mike White, “The White Lotus,” “Denials” (HBO Max)

Outstanding directorial achievement in limited and anthology series

Shannon Murphy, “Dying for Sex,” “It’s Not That Serious” (FX on Hulu)
Jason Bateman, “Black Rabbit,” “The Black Rabbits” (Netflix)
Antonio Campos, “The Beast in Me,” “Sick Puppy” (Netflix)
Lesli Linka Glatter, “Zero Day,” “Episode 6” (Netflix)
Ally Pankiw, “Black Mirror,” “Common People” (Netflix)

Outstanding directorial achievement in movies for television

Stephen Chbosky, “Nonnas” (Netflix)
Jesse Armstrong, “Mountainhead” (HBO Max)
Scott Derrickson, “The Gorge” (Apple TV+)
Michael Morris, “Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy” (Peacock)
Kyle Newacheck, “Happy Gilmore 2” (Netflix)

Outstanding directorial achievement in variety

Liz Patrick, “SNL50: The Anniversary Special” (NBC)
Yvonne De Mare, “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” “Julia Roberts; Sam Smith” (CBS)
Andy Fisher, “Jimmy Kimmel Live!,” “Stephen Colbert; Kumail Nanjiani; Reneé Rapp” (ABC)
Beth McCarthy-Miller, “SNL50: The Homecoming Concert” (Peacock)
Paul Pennolino, “Last Week Tonight With John Oliver,” “Public Media” (HBO Max)

Outstanding directorial achievement in sports

Matthew Gangl, 2025 World Series – Game 7 – Los Angeles Dodgers vs. Toronto Blue Jays (Fox Sports)
Steve Milton, 2025 Masters Tournament – Augusta National Golf Club (CBS Sports)
Rich Russo, Super Bowl LIX – Philadelphia Eagles vs. Kansas City Chiefs (Fox Sports)

Outstanding directorial achievement in reality / quiz & game

Mike Sweeney, “Conan O’Brien Must Go,” “Austria” (HBO Max)
Lucinda M. Margolis, “Jeopardy!,” “Ep. 9341” (Syndicated)
Adam Sandler, “The Price Is Right,” “10,000th Episode” (CBS)

Outstanding directorial achievement in documentary series / news

Rebecca Miller, “Mr. Scorsese,” “All This Filming Isn’t Healthy” (Apple TV+)
Marshall Curry, “SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night,” “Written By: A Week Inside the SNL Writers Room” (Peacock)
Susan Lacy and Jessica Levin, “Billy Joel: And So It Goes,” “Part Two” (HBO Max)
Alexandra Stapleton, “Sean Combs: The Reckoning,” “Official Girl” (Netflix)
Matt Wolf, “Pee-Wee as Himself,” “Part 1” (HBO Max)

Outstanding directorial achievement in commercials

Kim Gehrig (Somesuch), “You Can’t Win. So Win.” – Nike | Wieden+Kennedy
Miles Jay (Smuggler)
Spike Jonze (MJZ)
Andreas Nilsson (Biscuit Filmworks)
Steve Rogers (Biscuit Filmworks)