Oscar's Director Hierachy 2024 Edition
Sunday, March 17, 2024 at 12:00PM by Nathaniel
Spielberg & Scorsese just keep moving up Oscar's hall of fame
Since we did this with the Actresses and Actors, why not the Directors? Martin Scorsese added to his incredible record this season and Steven Spielberg did the same just last year, nudging Billy Wilder into fourth place. The Most Hallowed Directors Quartet is far more "current" than the Actor or Actress throne rooms as a result...
Please Note: Only directing nominations and wins were counted to form this list (many Oscar-loved directors also have nominations for producing or writing) and the minimum requirement to make the list was 3 nominations (only if you've won twice). We've also noted Honorary Oscars, Thalberg awards, and Special Achievement Oscars. How the ranks were determined and ties were broken is listed at the bottom of the post *
For fun and because it's interesting and no one ever shares it online we've listed how many films they directed were nominated/won for Best Picture. That's an interesting sidebar differentiating the director's branch enthusiasm from the overall Academy loves. One caveat: it's now much easier to score a Best Picture nod than it used to be which gives Scorsese and Spielberg (and other current directors) a huge statistical advantage. Spielberg is now tied with William Wyler for the 'non-official' stat of "most films they directed having landed Best Picture nominations" with 13 each (though they were often not the recipient of those particular nominations, since Picture nominations go to producers).
🔺 =indicates movement up in the past ten years (for film year 2015 and onward)
† = deceased so their stats won't change
OSCAR'S FOUR MASTERS
and 26 other obsessed-on auteurs
Scorsese, Wyler, Spielberg, Wilder
01 William Wyler † 12 noms | 3 wins | Thalberg | 13/3 BP
02 🔺 Steven Spielberg 9 noms | 2 wins | Thalberg | 13/1 BP
03 🔺 Martin Scorsese 10 noms | 1 win | 9/1 BP
04 Billy Wilder † 8 noms | 2 wins | Thalberg | 5/2 BP
MORE DIRECTORS-BRANCH BELOVED AUTEURS
Altman, Lean, Eastwood, Cukor, Coppola, Hitchcock
05 Fred Zinneman † 7 noms | 2 wins | 6/2 BP
06 David Lean † 7 noms | 2 wins | 4/2 BP
07 Frank Capra † 6 noms | 3 wins | 7/2 BP
08 John Ford † 5 noms | 4 wins | 8/1 BP
09 Woody Allen 7 noms | 1 win | 3/1 BP
10 Elia Kazan † 5 noms | 2 wins | Honorary | 4/2 BP
11 George Stevens † 5 noms | 2 win | Thalberg | 7/0 BP
12 George Cukor † 5 noms | 1 win | 8/1 BP
13 John Huston † 5 noms | 1 win | 4/0 BP
14 Clint Eastwood 4 noms | 2 wins | Thalberg | 5/2 BP
15 Frank Lloyd † 4 noms | 2 wins | 3/2 BP
16 Joseph L Mankiewicz † 4 noms | 2 wins | 4/1 BP
17 King Vidor † 5 noms | 0 wins | Honorary | 2 BP
18 Robert Altman † 5 noms | 0 wins | Honorary | 3/0 BP
19 Alfred Hitchcock † 5 noms | 0 wins | Thalberg | 3/1 BP
20 Clarence Brown † 5 noms | 0 wins | 2 BP
21 Francis Ford Coppola 4 noms | 1 win | Thalberg | 5/2 BP
OTHER ACADEMY FAVOURITES
Lee, Lumet, Kubrick, Nichols, Iñárritu, Weir
22 Michael Curtiz † 4 noms | 1 win | 6/1 BP
23 Mike Nichols † 4 noms | 1 win | 3/0 BP
24 Federico Fellini † 4 noms | 0 wins | Honorary | 0 BP
25 Sidney Lumet † 4 noms | 0 wins | Honorary | 4/0 BP
26 🔺 Peter Weir 4 noms | 0 wins | Honorary | 3/0 BP
27 🔺 Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu 3 noms | 2 wins | Special Achievement | 3/1 BP
28 Leo McCarey 3 noms | 2 wins | 5/1 BP
29 Ang Lee 3 noms | 2 wins | 4/0 BP
30 Oliver Stone 3 noms | 2 wins | 3/1 BP
31 Stanley Kubrick † 4 noms | 0 wins | 3/0 BP
BUBBLING UNDER? WHO WILL JOIN THE LIST NEXT?
Anderson, Nolan, Campion, Payne
THE REST IS A DISCUSSION PROMPT... NOT COMPREHENSIVE SO DON'T SAY WE MISSED SOMEONE!
Tantalizingly close to the list with 3 nominations and still working. Will they make it?
Joel & Ethan Coen* (one win for direction), 🔺 David Fincher, Alexander Payne, David O. Russell, 🔺 Paul Thomas Anderson
* now working separately and technically their first nomination for Director was only for Joel due to Oscar's now defunct 'solo' director rule
Two nominations. Will they have a third round?
🔺 Jane Campion (winner), 🔺 Chris Nolan (yes only two noms, one win), 🔺 Yorgos Lanthimos, 🔺 Adam McKay
Stuck at one but well loved. Will they ever be nominated again?
🔺 Greta Gerwig, 🔺 Guilermo Del Toro (winner), 🔺 Denis Villeneuve, Wes Anderson, Pedro Almodovar.
* HOW WERE THE RANKS DETERMINED? Number of nominations creates the initial order with wins, breaking any ties. Two wins equals a phantom extra nomination allowing them to jump up a rank (but not leapfrog someone who won a competitive Oscar. Honorary of Thalberg awards add a half a nomination to the tally, but they can only leapfrog someone with more nominations if they have more wins. If the stats are still tied after those things, the number of films they directed landing Best Picture nominations, breaks the tie. (Third and fourth wins are so rare --only three and one people have gone there, respectively-- that each occurence adds an extra whole phantom nomination to the initial tally though they cannot leapfrog people with multiple wins if its close which accounts for Frank Capra and John Ford's placements.)
Reader Comments (16)
George Stevens won twice - 1951 (A Place in the Sun), and 1956 (Giant)
David Lean directed 5 Best Picture nominees: Great Expectiations (1947), Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Doctor Zhivago (1965) , A Passage to India (1984) and co-directed a 6th - In Which We Serve (1943)
I can see Nolan,Fincher,Lanthimos and Anderson rising up the chart.
Spielberg will get into double digits,I do think Scorsese could tie Wyler but he's getting on in years.
The women directors are poorly represented.
Yorgos is only 50. Given how well respected he's become I could see him earning quite a number of nominations across the next 20 years. Villeneuve and Fincher also seem to be making the kinds of films Oscar will continue to honor, The Killer's smaller scale/profile notwithstanding.
The youngest high-ranking director on the list is Iñárritu (age 60) at #27. I can see him getting two or three more nods and maybe one win in the next decade or so, which would move him into the top 10.
Just some more nits to pick
Sam Wood should really be included: In addition to the three films for which he received Best Director nominations - Goodbye Mr Chips (1939), Our Town (1940) and Kings Row (1942), all of which were nominated for Best Picture, three more films he directed were Best Picture nominees: Kitty Foyle (1940), Pride of the Yankees (1942) and For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943).
Mervyn LeRoy also belongs somewhere in there. The was only nominated once, for Best Film nominee Random Harvest (1942), and many of his films were nominated for Best Picture: Five Star Final (1931-32), I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932-33), Anthony Adverse (1936), Blossoms in the Dust (1941), Madame Curie (1943), Quo Vadis (1951), and co-directed Mister Roberts (1955)
@ Amy Camus
If you add Wood and LeRoy, you'd also probably have to consider including people like Daldry, Fosse, Ivory, Jewison, Kramer, Polanski, Pollack, Schlesinger, Scott, Wellman and Wise. I can see why Nathaniel has the rules he does.
@Amy & Frank—
To me this just goes to show how silly the distinction between Picture and Directing is. If the point of a director is to be the person ultimately responsible for all things that create the movie, how could it be a different achievement from Best Picture? The person who directs the Best Picture of the year would be Best Director by default, as I see it.
How could one movie be better than another despite weaker direction? How could one director have done a better job despite having directed a weaker picture?
We take the separation between those categories for granted but it feels pretty imaginary to me. Just an invention that allows men in suits (not artists) to win Oscars.
@ DK
Point taken!
I think Fellini and Altman's records are pretty impressive. Fellini, because he wasn't American and never received a BP nomination, and Altman because so many of his nominations came without BP nominations.
I think Stepehn Daldry can make it in here if he returns to making films. He hasn't lost his touch. His work on the Crown was well praised, as was his work on the Inheritance. Even with changes to the Academy, his work is the type that's still celebrated.
It feels like the Directors Branch is somewhat deliberate about not nominating the most prominent directors - aside from Scorsese and Spielberg - repeatedly. It's surprising that the Coens, PTA, and Tarantino only have 3 nominations, and Almodovar has only one (we're told the Academy is embracing international films, but a Best Director nod for Pedro would have been welcome on either of his last two efforts). This seems to be a shift from earlier generations, when Wilder, Wyler, Capra, Lean, etc. could rack up Best Director nominations.
Shouldn't Leo McCarey be comfortably in the top 30 on this list? Three total nominations, including two wins and 4 BP nods including one win?
Always found it interesting that Woody Allen only had 3 of his 7 Best Director noms match Best Picture -- and that Bullets Over Broadway (6 overall noms) and Interiors (5 overall noms) weren't among them. And they could've gone further with Manhattan, Purple Rose of Cairo, Blue Jasmine, Match Point, and a few others that were reasonably on the bubble in their respective years.
I love the Leo McCarey win. I think his is one of the more inspired wins in this category, especially since he beat out the BP winner.
@jules, I also think directors now make fewer films. When Capra, Wyler, and Wilder were working in the studio system, they regularly made 1-2 films a year. The only folks working at that pace are Woody Allen and Clint Eastwood, and they're both here. I especially think that if Tarantino made more films, he'd probably be here.
@ Joe G.
You mean McCarey's first directing win, yes? His second one was for a Best Picture winner.
Given that he won Best Director twice, and for his two most recent features, Alfonso Cuaron seems fairly likely to crack the list at some point.
Dieter & Joe G -- thanks for bringing up Leo McCarey (love him so can't believe I missed when researching this list). He's now at #28