Only one director has ever won four Oscars for Best Directing, and that was the great John Ford, who only won Best Picture with How Green Was My Valley. The films that won instead of John Ford’s Best Director wins won just one or two Oscars in total, weirdly enough.
Mutiny on the Bounty – 1 Oscar for Best Picture
Rebecca – 2 Oscars for Best Picture and Cinematography.
The Greatest Show on Earth – 2 Oscars for Best Picture and Screenplay.
Only one of these splits was in the post-expanded ballot era.
Next in line with three wins was the great Frank Capra, who won Picture and Director twice, with It Happened One Night and You Can’t Take It With You. He won Best Director for Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, which lost to The Great Ziegfeld. All of these were in the preferential (or expanded) ballot era.
And finally, the champion, William Wyler, had three Best Director wins, and three Best Picture wins: Mrs Miniver, The Best Years of Our Lives, and Ben-Hur. Only Mrs. Miniver was in the expanded ballot era.
The list of directors who have won two Best Directing Oscars, along with Best Picture include:
Billy Wilder: The Lost Weekend (1945), The Apartment (1960)
Elia Kazan: Gentleman’s Agreement (1947), On the Waterfront (1954)
Fred Zinnemann: From Here to Eternity (1953), A Man for All Seasons (1966)
Miloš Forman: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975), Amadeus (1984)
David Lean: The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
Robert Wise: West Side Story (1961), The Sound of Music (1965)
Clint Eastwood: Unforgiven (1992), Million Dollar Baby (2004)
The directors who have won twice, with just one Best Picture win:
Leo McCarey: The Awful Truth (1937), Going My Way (1944)
Joseph L. Mankiewicz: A Letter to Three Wives (1949), All About Eve (1950)
Oliver Stone: Platoon (1986), Born on the Fourth of July (1989)
Steven Spielberg: Schindler’s List (1993), Saving Private Ryan (1998)
Alejandro González Iñárritu: Birdman (2014), The Revenant (2015)
Frank Lloyd: The Divine Lady (1928/29), Cavalcade (1932/33)
Lewis Milestone: Two Arabian Knights (1927/28), All Quiet on the Western Front (1929/30)
And finally, those directors who won twice with no Best Picture wins:
Frank Borzage: Seventh Heaven (1927/28), Bad Girl (1931/32)
George Stevens: A Place in the Sun (1951), Giant (1956)
Ang Lee: Brokeback Mountain (2005), Life of Pi (2012)
Alfonso Cuarón: Gravity (2013), Roma (2018)
Christopher Nolan is about to enter the Elite Double Double club, directors who have won both Picture and Director twice, and the first since 2004, more than twenty years ago when Clint Eastwood did it with Million Dollar Baby.
We don’t know that he’ll win, of course, but it sure seems likely. It is not the most competitive year, and the awards operate more as a hive mind than they have in the past. The branch power has been diluted with the Academy inviting thousands of new members who are mostly international and largely chosen to diversify the membership. They tend to vote for Picture AND Director ever since.
It goes something like this:
- 2012: 176 invitations
- 2013: 276 invitations
- 2014: 271 invitations
- 2015: 322 invitations #oscarssowhite
- 2016: 683 invitations Trump wins, mass hysteria ignites
- 2017: 774 invitations
- 2018: 928 invitations (The largest class in Academy history)
- 2019: 842 invitations
- 2020: 819 invitations (The final mega-class)
- 2021: 395 invitations (The intentional slowdown begins)
- 2022: 397 invitations
- 2023: 398 invitations
- 2024: 487 invitations
- 2025: 534 invitations
- 2026: 529 invitations (The most recent class)
It seems that the larger membership has changed the voting because it’s turned itself into a mirror of the other hive minds at Rotten Tomatoes, Gold Derby, etc. I don’t know where any of it goes, but it’s worth noting that this is the Oscars’ 99th year, heading into the century mark, and it’s clear that in their final act they’ve attempted to do what many in Hollywood have done, especially the boomers — absolve themselves by elevating marginalized groups.
So it’s all the more unusual that Christopher Nolan, a white dude, is circling such an historic career benchmark, but of course, I do not believe he would be were it not for The Odyssey’s “woke” bona fides. Just the casting of Elliot Page alone is groundbreaking, but when you add in Lupita Nyong’o and the ensuing culture war, this movie will be more than just a movie, and Nolan will emerge even more of a hero than he already is.
It’s not about making history, or else Ryan Coogler would have won Best Director last year. To date, no black director has ever won Best Director, despite the Woketopia Hollywood has become. And also, only one black actress has won in lead in all of that time, too. But when it comes to building a consensus, there probably isn’t any motivator stronger than sticking it to Trump and MAGA, as we saw with last year’s Peak Woke winner, One Battle After Another.
What matters is pushing the ideology forward, and Nolan has done more than enough to satisfy on that count. But also, what movie can possibly beat it? What movie will be that big and be that important to so many people, even Conservatives? I can’t think of one at the moment. Maybe that will change. Maybe a “little underdog that could” might emerge, but I don’t see this hive mind turning on Nolan.
The last few Best Director/Best Picture winners;
2025–PTA/One Battle After Another
2024–Sean Baker/Anora
2023–Christopher Nolan/Oppenheimer
2022–The Daniels/Everything Everywhere All At Once
2021–Jane Campion/The Power of the Dog/CODA
2020–Chloé Zhao/Nomadland
2019–Bong Joon Ho/Parasite
2018–Alfonso Cuarón, Roma/Green Book
2017–Guillermo Del Toro/The Shape of Water
2016–Damien Chazelle, La La Land/Moonlight
2015–Alejandro G. Iñárritu/The Revenant
2014–Alejandro G. Iñárritu/Birdman
2013–Guillermo Del Toro, Gravity/12 Years a Slave
2012–Ang Lee, Life of Pi/Argo
That said, they will want the Best Director list to be diverse, not just five white guys lest Natalie Portman yell at them again. But the problem is it isn’t exactly a strong year for women, though Olivia Wilde is getting major buzz for The Invite, which has made about $20 million at the box office and around $40 million globally.
It also doesn’t seem to be a year with a black director who might get in, unless Chris Rock somehow manages to break through. No, this year will be about Christopher Nolan and the unapoletically queer movie, La Bola Negra, or the Black Ball, meaning being “black balled” for being gay. Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi are together Los Jovis.
Los Jovis will be all the rage, and with Netflix backing it, there is always the chance that this thing could upend Nolan’s second Best Director win. We haven’t really had an unapologetically queer movie win the Oscar in this era of the Great Awokening, and it seems overdue. Emilia Perez crashing and burning two years ago was the closest the Oscar race has come to anything like that.
That’s definitely one to keep an eye on, considering Los Jovis won Best Director in Cannes this past year. It seems like a movie the Oscar pundits are going to elevate and push forward, not to mention Netflix as a major awards power player.
But really, the other pair of directors who collaborated on Project Hail Mary, a favorite of the public but not the pundits, should be considered for Best Director. Phil Lord and Christopher Miller.
Of course they are long shots with this crowd of voters. The film is not woke in the least bit, doesn’t drive their ongoing rage against Trump, and is just a great movie. So yeah, forget it, right? But it seems likely to me that Lord and Miller land at DGA, especially it’s harder for the more artsy directors to get in there. Los Jovis maybe — maybe?
And perhaps the Palme d’Or winner, Fjord, directed by Christoph Mungiu, might not land at DGA but probably lands at Oscar, unless the pundits feel it is too challenging for them.
Early word is that Martin McDonagh’s Wild Horse Nine (which is currently being screened here and there) is great. The pundits already had a place carved out for McDonagh, and if the film is really good, it seems like an easy lift for both DGA and Oscar.
The next one on the list would have to be Denis Villeneuve, who is coming in with the final of the Dune trilogy. That, along with Project Hail Mary and The Odyssey, will make Best Picture a blockbuster lineup once again, and that’s good for Hollywood. Might Villeneuve get a Best Director nod this time? He’s only been nominated once, and that was for Arrival, but never for the Dune movies. It’s possible he finally gets in now that they’re closing them out, but it will have to be the best of the three.
Then there is Alejandro G. Inarritu for Digger, another possibility. Although considering he’s won two Best Director Oscars already, there won’t be urgency to nominate. And speaking of which, David Fincher is, to my mind, the best living director who has never won an Oscar. This year, he’s coming in with The Adventures of Cliff Booth off of a Tarantino screenplay starring Brad Pitt. They’ve kept it all very quiet, which might explain why the pundits aren’t going anywhere near it. There’s also La Bola Negra as the Netflix movie they hope will crash the Oscars and won’t want to compete against themselves.
The Adventures of Cliff Booth might end up being wildly entertaining and only semi-serious, which might mean it’s not Oscar-enough for these voters. On the other hand, all the Oscars should be is a way to award or nominate the best in any year, no matter the genre. That’s how I’ve always seen it, but we know how it’s been going lately, and for a few movies here and there, they mostly stick to the Spirit Awards vibe.
Either way, all things considered, this is shaping up to be quite a year in the Best Director category, but don’t be surprised if Olivia Wilde somehow cracks the five.
Here are my predictions.
Best Picture
The Odyssey
La Bola Negra
Project Hail Mary
Wild Horse Nine
The Adventures of Cliff Booth
Fjord
Dune III
Digger
The Invite
Obsession
Alt. Ink
Director
Christopher Nolan, The Odyssey
Christian Mungiu, Fjord
Los Jovis, La Bola Negra
David Fincher, Adventures of Cliff Booth
Martin McDonagh, Wild Horse Nine
Alt. Denis Villeneuve, Dune III, Olivia Wilde, The Invite, Danny Boyle, Ink
Actor
Matt Damon, The Odyssey
Tom Cruise, Digger
Brad Pitt, The Adventures of Cliff Booth
Ryan Gosling, Project Hail Mary
John Malkovich, Wild Horse Nine
Alt. Andrew Scott, Elsinore, Guy Pearce, Ink
Actress
Ruth Madeley, Being Heumann
Julianne Moore, The Debut
Rosalind Eleazar, Misty Green
Renate Reinsve, Fjord
Supporting Actor
Paul Giamatti, The Debut
Guitarricadelafuente, La Bola Negra
Sam Rockwell, Wild Horse Nine
Jeremy Strong, The Social Reckoning
Edward Norton, The Invite
Supporting Actress
Penelope Cruz, La Bola Negra
Anne Hathaway, The Odyssey
Samantha Morton, The Odyssey
Carla Gugino, The Adventures of Cliff Booth
Sandra Huller, Project Hail Mary
Original Screenplay
Misty Green
Fjord
Wild Horse Nine
Digger
Ink
Adapted Screenplay
The Odyssey
Project Hail Mary
La Bola Negra
The Invite
The Adventures of Cliff Booth
Editing
The Odyssey
Project Hail Mary
Dune III
Adventures of Cliff Booth
Wild Horse Nine
Casting
The Odyssey
The Debut
Digger
The Adventures of Cliff Booth
La Bola Negra
Visual Effects
The Odyssey
Dune: Part Three
Project Hail Mary
Werwulf
Disclosure Day
Cinematography
Dune: Part Three
The Odyssey
Project Hail Mary
Werwulf
The Adventures of Cliff Booth
Costumes
Werwulf
The Odyssey
Dune: Part Three
The Adventures of Cliff Booth
Sense and Sensibility
Makeup and Hair
Digger
The Odyssey
Dune: Part Three
Wewulf
Adventures of Cliff Booth
Production Design
The Odyssey
Dune: Part Three
Project Hail Mary
Werwulf
Adventures of Cliff Booth
