The Directors Guild of America (DGA) unveiled their line-up of the finest achievement in directing. The DGA Awards are typically a prime bellwether for the Academy Awards (nominations will be announced this coming Thursday) as the Best Picture and Best Director category are historically linked. Check out the list of nominees below:

OUTSTANDING DIRECTORIAL ACHIEVEMENT IN A FEATURE FILM FOR 2015

• Alejandro González Iñárritu, The Revenant
• Tom McCarthy, Spotlight
• Adam McKay, The Big Short
• George Miller, Mad Max: Fury Road
• Ridley Scott, The Martian

Iñárritu won this award last year for Birdman and was previously nominated in this category for the 2006 film Babel; he also previously won a DGA honor for directing a Proctor and Gamble commercial in 2012. Scott has previously been nominated three times before for Thelma and Louise, Gladiator and Black Hawk Down; he has never won before. McCarthy, McKay and Miller are all first-time nominees.

The directors notably missing from the line-up include Todd Haynes (Carol) and Steven Spielberg (Bridge of Spies); both films are still hoping to catch fire with the Academy when nominations are released early Thursday morning.

For the first time, the DGA Awards introduced a new category honoring the finest achievements from a debut filmmaker. Check out the line-up for the category below:

OUTSTANDING DIRECTORIAL ACHIEVEMENT OF A FIRST-TIME FEATURE FILM DIRECTOR FOR 2015

• Fernando Coimbra, A Wolf at the Door
• Joel Edgerton, The Gift
• Alex Garland, Ex Machina
• Marielle Heller, The Diary of a Teenage Girl
• László Nemes, Son of Saul