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”

  2. Hi, Bruce.

    I have seen 53 of these movies. The most recently made title is The King’s Speech.

    I have seen 7 of the top 10, 11 of the top 20, 18 of the top 30, 27 of the top 40, 35 of the top 50, 40 of the top 50 etc.

    High on my list of movies to see are The Artist and Skippy. I keep meaning to see Ghandi.

    There are few movies on this list which I have not seen which I cannot wait to see. Some of these titles have just escaped me, but others I have deliberately avoided either because of subject matter or artists involved.

    The highest ranked movie I have seen is Casablanca at number 1 by Curtiz.

    The lowest ranked movie I have seen is The Informer at 80 by Ford.

    The highest ranked film I have not seen is One Flew Over The Cookoo’s Nest at Number 2 by Forman. Somehow I cannot see me ever watching this disturbing movie. Others I cannot see me ever seeing are Silence of the Lambs, Traffic or Saving Private Ryan.

    I saw Forest Gump with friends. Utter waste of time.

    Films I watch multiple times include Gigi, The Sound of Music, Marty, How Green Was My Valley, and It Happened One Night.

    I’ve read The Life of Pi, but did not see the movie.

    Best Picture winner goes to the Producer, not the Director, hence Alfred Hitchcock. Sigh.

    I wonder how many of your readers would be shocked or care one way or the other that I cannot stand Woody Allen? I cannot see why he is popular.

    Cheers, Flora

    Reply

    1. Hey Flora.
      1. Tally count….me 84, Steve 70 and you 53. You can not win them all the time.
      2. 80% of the Top 50 is pretty impressive.
      3. I think you will like The Artist. Skippy is one of the 4 that I have not seen. Little Jackie Cooper even got an Oscar nomination for that one.
      4. Gandhi has a great performance by Sir Ben….but it is a long and slightly boring movie…at least in my humble opinion.
      5. One Flew is a classic….and has some great scenes…but it does have some pretty disturbing scenes. I was not impressed with either Silence or Traffic. Saving Private Ryan has a great first part…but the second half of the movie is just a sub par war movie. So I guess I am saying you are not missing much if you never see those movies.
      6. Poor Forest Gump….you are not the only one that does not like that movie. I thought it was good…..but I am a huge Tom Hanks fan.
      7. I like the movies you watch on a regular basis too.
      8. Woody has made it easy for people to not like him. His life is a mess…but some of his movies are pretty funny.
      As always thanks for stopping by and talking movies….it is greatly appreciated.

      Reply

  3. So glad to see so many favorites at the top of the moviescore Bruce, nice work amigo.
    Casablanca tops the list, my favorite (live-action) movie of the 1940’s. William Wyler did a stupendous job on Ben-Hur good to see him listed at no.6, ditto Peter Jackson in third with The Return of the King, richly deserved successes.
    I’ve seen 70 of the 88 films you’ve listed, not bad but there are still a bunch of classics I haven’t got round to watching, you know the ones. 🙂
    I saw the other comment why is Hurt Locker near the bottom of the list. It won Best Picture as well as Best Director didn’t it, maybe because it wasn’t very successful?
    Sad to see my favorite director Alfred Hitchcock missing from the list, he did get nominated 5 times but never won. Other favorite directors of mine include Ford, Lean, Wyler and Spielberg, all Oscar winners. Voted Up.

    Reply

    1. Hey Steve….70 is pretty impressive…I am at 84…..only 4 have escaped and they all before 1932. Glad you are happy with the rankings. I did notice that Ben-Hur almost reached a Top 5 spot. I agree with you 100% that it is sad that Hitchcock is not on this list…especially with so many great movies on his resume. I think I was able to explain The Hurt Locker….getting totally ignored at the box office does not help in my ranking system. Your favorites racked up 11 of the wins…that is a pretty good % for only 4 directors….as always thanks for stopping by and talking movies.

      Reply

      1. It’s interesting seeing how many or how few of the films listed did not actually win Best Picture despite the director winning. Saving Private Ryan is a good example. A lot of people still complain when that happens but at least it does add a bit of suspense at the Academy Awards. Even worse is when a movie gets nominated for Best Film but the director doesn’t even merit a nomination.

        Reply

        1. Hey Steve….for some reason I thought the percentage was going to be around 95% Oscar winning directors with Best Picture Oscar Winners. That must have been a stat that looked only at a segment of the winners. I think Saving Private Ryan is the best example of how they got it wrong. Shakespeare in Love is one of the worst Best Picture winners in my mind….and I do not think I am alone in that thought process. I agree with you about a movie getting a Best Picture nom…and the director gets ignored. Though I think the fact that Ben Affleck got hosed with Argo…is one of the reasons Argo started gaining serious steam in it’s way to winning a Best Picture Oscar.

          Reply

    1. Hey JR….well every movie on this list is a good one. I think The Hurt Locker is ranked lower than you want is because it is in a group with some of the best movies ever made. Plus The Hurt Locker is the least succesful movie at the box office. Box office is a big part of the equation used to calculate the score. Another huge part of the equation is reviews and audience voting…on that The Hurt Locker comes in 41st place….that is better than average…but not enough to overcome the poor box office showing. The final piece of the equation puzzle is awards…The Hurt Locker got 9 nominations…that is awesome for a movie…but once again over 40 movies on this list had over 10 nominations. Hope that explains…as I first stated…every movie on this list is a good to great one…thanks for stopping by.

      Reply

  5. about damn time! in the future I will be sure to remember that it will take you 4 years to complete a simple request. all jokes aside this was worth the wait. thanks for heads up on it’s completion.

    Reply

    1. Hey Tyler…..better late than never. Not sure this was a simple request…but it should have not taken me this long to finish it. But it is complete now….unless you want Best Original and Best Adapted Screenplay next….lol.

      Reply

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