Best Director Oscar Winners

Christopher Nolan is the latest director to win the Best Director Oscar
Christopher Nolan is the latest director to win the Best Director Oscar

Want to know the best Best Director Oscar Winners?  How about the worst Best Director Oscar Winners?  Curious about Best Director Oscar Winners box office grosses or which Best Director Oscar Winners picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Best Director Oscar Winners got the best reviews from critics and audiences and which one got the worst reviews? Well, you have come to the right place because we have all of that information.

Drivel Part: (That is what my wife calls this part of the page).  Back in February 2011, our movie ranking pages were located at HubPages.  As The King’s Speech was dueling The Social Network for the big awards we got a request (by Tyler) to rank the Big 6 Oscar® categories. Well, we quickly knocked out the Best Picture, Best Actor and Best Actress categories. Originally we had intended on doing the other 3 Oscar categories immediately after doing the first three….we sadly dropped the ball.  But 4 years later we have finally knocked out the other 3 categories.  In the last couple of weeks we completed our Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress pages…and now….finally….. we are done….as the Best Director page is now complete and published.  We know there are many other Oscar categories…but these 6 seem to be the main ones.

Since 1928, there have been over 90 Best Director Oscar Winners. This page will rank all Best Director Oscar Winning movies from Best to Worst in five different sortable columns of information.  If you use the sort and search buttons the massive table becomes very interactive.

John Ford won a record 4 Best Director Oscars®
John Ford won a record 4 Best Director Oscars®

Best Director Oscar Winners Can Be Ranked 5 Ways In The Table Below

The really cool thing about ther table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.

  • Sort by winners
  • Sort Best Director Oscar Winners by actual domestic box office grosses (in millions)
  • Sort Best Director Oscar Winners by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
  • Sort Best Director Oscar Winners by critic reviews and audiences voting.  60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie.
  • Sort by how many Oscar nominations and how many Oscar® wins each received.
  • Sort Best Director Oscar Winners by Ultimate Movie Ranking (UMR) Score.  UMR puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.  The ceiling to earn points for box office is $200 million…once a movie passes that mark it stops earning points in that category.
 
Steven Spielberg has 2 Best Director Oscar wins...can he get another one?
Steven Spielberg has 2 Best Director Oscar wins…can he get another one?

 Some Trivia We Found Interesting And Felt The Urge To Share

1.  A Best Director Oscar Winning Movie grosses on average $266.70 million in adjusted box office dollars (we use actual ticket sales to come up with that figure).
2.  Of the 89 Best Director Oscar Winning Movies…75 crossed the magical $100 million adjusted box office mark.  That is 85.22% of the movies.
3.  The 89 Best Director Oscar Winning Movie have earned 765 Oscar® nominations (all categories) and won 436 Oscars® (all categories).
4.  We thought there would only be a few movies in which the Best Director Oscar Winner was NOT from the Best Picture Oscar Winning movie….there are actually 25 movies in which the director of the Best Picture winner did NOT win the Oscar®.  That is 32.05%.
5.  John Ford has the most Best Director Oscar wins…with 4.  Frank Capra and William Wyler are the only directors to have 3 Best Director Oscar® wins.
6.  16 directors have won 2 Best Director Oscars®.  Clint Eastwood, Ang Lee and Steven Spielberg are the only active directors that have won 2 Best Director Oscars®.  That means only 65 different people have won a Best Director Oscar® over the last 88 years.
7.  David Lean is the only director to have two movies in the Top 10 of the UltimateMovieRanking score.
8.  Dustin Hoffman has starred in 4 movies that won a Best Director Oscar®.

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19 thoughts on “Best Director Oscar Winners”

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    Reply

  3. Hi

    I wonder who will win in 2016. The talk is Ridley Scott for The Martian. He did a fantastic job and at least it was big box office. I thought he had won for Gladiator but the film won and not he himself. He’s responsible for such a great body of work that I’m surprised he hasn’t won, but I suppose it wouldn’t be the first time that great directors haven’t won (Hitchcock, Hawks etc,)
    The list is very impressive but I have to admit there’s some people I haven’t even heard of, for example the guy who directed Rocky, what is he doing now?
    Joseph L Manciewicz is a director I’ve always admired, not only directing but writing. I’m surprised he’d not as celebrated today as he once was. And of course Woody Allen.

    Reply

    1. Hey Chris….thanks for checking out my Best Director page. So who will win in 2016? I think the front runners currently are last year’s winner Alejandro González Iñárritu for The Revenant, Tom McCarthey for Spotlight and Ridley Scott for The Martian. Of those three…I will be rooting for Scott…I am still surprised he did not get a Oscar win for Gladiator. Not sure how many more movies Sir Ridley will be making…as he is getting up there in age. John G. Avildsen of Rocky fame also hit it big with the Karate Kid movies. So he was not a one hit wonder. Joseph L Manciewicz was a very talented movie maker…it is a shame that his name is not mentioned with the greats of all-time. He got 10 Oscar nominations and won 4 Oscars in his career. As always you comments are greatly appreciated.

      Reply

    1. Hey Gil….glad you liked the page. Lawrence was my father’s favorite as well. That movie is one of the highest rated movies in my database.

      Reply

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