‘Directors Guild’ also adds Internet series to list

LOS ANGELES - Agence France-Presse

Online programming can compete in the Directors Guild Awards, the U.S. institution announced on July 29, following suit of the Emmys, which recently announced a Netflix series was nominated in nine categories.
 
Internet programs are now eligible for eight categories “in recognition of the increasing level of original programming being created by our directors and their teams specifically for Internet distribution,” the DGA said in a statement.
 
The eligible categories include dramatic series, comedy series, movies for TV and miniseries, and documentaries, among others.
 
DGA’s decision to include programs produced and distributed online (through Netflix, YouTube or other channels) comes on the heels of the Writers Guild (WGA) decision to do the same only days ago.
 
On July 18, Netflix political drama “House of Cards” made history with its best drama series Emmy nomination. The Emmys are America’s preeminent television awards.
 
The comedy “Arrested Development,” which Netflix resurrected after it went off air in 2006, earned a best actor nomination for Jason Bateman among two other nods.

House of Cards makes history

The Netflix political drama “House of Cards” made television history on July 18 when it became the first online-only series ever to be nominated for a major Emmy award.

The FX miniseries “American Horror Story: Asylum” meanwhile collected 17 nods, the most of any TV show, ahead of the 65th annual primetime Emmy awards ceremony in Los Angeles on September 22.

But “House of Cards,” starring Oscar winner Kevin Spacey as a shrewd US congressman, broke fresh Emmy ground, scoring nine nominations including best drama and, for Spacey, best actor in a drama. Inspired by a BBC series from the early 1990s, “House of Cards” was made exclusively for Netflix, the online movie streaming website, which put all 13 episodes online in February in one fell swoop. Other nominees for best drama mark the first time no series from a mainstream US television network has been nominated in the category. “We may have been the first original series that was premiered that way, but we’re not the first series that’s been consumed that way,” Spacey said.