Who is the most powerful director in Hollywood right now? Perhaps you’d opt for a clean answer: It’s the person whose latest movie started selling tickets a year ahead of time. But who’s the second-most powerful director in Hollywood? What about the third? The 23rd?
These are the questions that have occupied the Vulture offices for the better part of a year, since I first started mulling a list of the most powerful directors in Hollywood. As the industry exits an era of cinematic universes, when mega-producers like Kevin Feige ruled the land, directors seem to matter again. A new generation of cinephiles has come of age, raised on YouTube, Reddit, and Letterboxd. Having spent their youths under the hegemony of the MCU, they bristle at interconnected comic-book worlds the same way their forebearers in the ‘70s did at old-fashioned musicals. Our young stars feel the same way: When Timothée Chalamet devoted years of his life to prepping for a role, it was for a Safdie, not a superhero.
The balance of power has shifted, Puck’s Matt Belloni told me. It used to be that a figure like Pirates of the Caribbean’s Gore Verbinski, “a big-time commercial director,” was considered far more important to the industry than any Oscar-friendly auteur. “But because of the rise of film-fan culture, the communities built around filmmakers, that has given more power to the auteurs who can deliver an audience.” Think Ryan Coogler, Greta Gerwig, or Denis Villeneuve — “butts-in-seats directors who can also get awards,” Belloni says. IP is still king: Many of our most influential directors got that way thanks to their facility with it. However, if franchise producers were the power players of the 2010s, the buzziest deals and biggest releases of the 2020s belong to filmmakers who are attractions in their own right.
In a sense, we’re living through an echo of the 1970s, when Movie Brats like Coppola and Scorsese took over Hollywood, leveraging their own talent and reputation to get studios to bankroll their projects. The movie business is more niche today, but it’s also accessible to a wider group of directors, who now have myriad ways to wield their influence. The YouTube-to-horror pipeline is a well-trodden path to success. Indie studios like A24 and Neon dangle creative freedom in exchange for tastemaker cred. A new class of Oscar voters use their platform to elevate a host of fresh and exciting filmmakers.
That’s why, when it came time to create the list, we couldn’t stop at 20, or even 50 names. We had to take it all the way to 100, handily organized into tiers to reflect the myriad mental (and actual) taxonomies executives employ when casting about for a name for a new project. And given the nature of the list, we couldn’t do it entirely ourselves. Over the course of several months, I consulted with agents, executives, producers, and publicists — all anonymously, of course — as well as a handful of L.A.-based journalists like Belloni who know the inner workings of Hollywood intimately. Their opinions influenced the rankings, though the final order was determined by me alone.
• Body of work: Have they reliably delivered on expectations over a long career? For some directors that means box-office success; for others, critical acclaim and award nominations. The key here is consistency: One of the biggest compliments insiders can give is that a filmmaker “never misses.”
• Bankability: Can they turn a $100 million budget into a billion-dollar gross? If not, what about turning a $10 million budget into a $100 million gross?
• Creative control: Are they the primary author of a film, or merely a hired gun? The more a director puts their aesthetic stamp on a project, the more credit they get for its success.
• Prestige: It’s not just trophies on a shelf. Attracting A-List talent remains one of the fastest ways to get a green light, and dangling the image of an Oscar podium or Cannes red carpet remains an effective way to land a star.
• Reputation: In the age of Letterboxd and Rotten Tomatoes, it’s never been easier for studios and financiers to quantify the reach of a single director. Every parasocial subreddit matters.
• Potential: “Is it up and to the right for these people, or down and to the left?” says a producer. Meaning, have they already peaked, or is the best yet to come? We’re not just looking backwards with this list; we’re trying to create a snapshot of who has power right now. That means identifying names on an upward trajectory, no matter how scant their resumes may be.
Note that the “in Hollywood” part matters. Jafar Panahi and Joachim Trier are great at what they do, but they’re playing in different leagues, with different rules. To be eligible for this list, an international filmmaker must have made at least one major project within the Hollywood system. Similarly, this is a list of film directors. Though it’s more common than ever for directors to move between TV and movies, big names who now primarily work in television — people like Severance’s Ben Stiller, or The Studio’s Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg — belong on a different list.
Streaming has also complicated notions of “bankability.” A $100 million Netflix movie is a black box. Its director faces much less accountability than one who goes the theatrical route. Inside the industry, interpretations of streaming deals differ. The Ringer’s Sean Fennessey sees Guillermo Del Toro’s Netflix partnership as a form of retreat: “He has gone to the only place that will finance his films at scale.” A top publicist sees it as a flex: “If you can get $50 million more out of a streamer because you are who you are, then that’s power.” However you feel about Del Toro, would you feel the same about Martin Scorsese, who similarly relies on streamers to finance his late-career output? Ultimately, we decided to give an edge to filmmakers who have proven themselves theatrically, while not discounting streaming projects entirely.
Regarding representation: “There are like no women on this list, which is probably accurate, but it should be acknowledged how fucked we are,” says an agent. “And it’s getting worse, honestly.” The list is a reflection of the Hollywood power structure, which remains very white and very male. Nevertheless, we tried to account for the ways in which female and non-white directors are held to a higher standard, noting where they were possibly being discounted by our sources and adjusting the rankings accordingly.
Finally, there is an element of apples-to-oranges to a list that includes both Sean Baker and Shawn Levy. When in doubt, we employed a mental exercise we called The Phone Test: If you’re Donna Langley or Ted Sarandos and you’ve got missed calls from two different filmmakers, who are you calling back first?
Enough of my yapping. Here is Vulture’s inaugural list of the 100 most powerful directors in Hollywood:
From across the industry echoes a resounding chorus: “Life’s too short to work with David O. Russell.” Even in post-cancellation Hollywood, his reputation for volatility and abuse stands out. An agent says, “He’s one step away from doing something that will render your whole project toxic.” But as long as Christian Bale remains willing to work with him, he gets to keep making movies. See this fall’s Madden, in which the star plays Al Davis opposite Nicolas Cage.
It’s pretty funny that Warner Bros.’ 2025, a year in which it enjoyed the most sustained critical and commercial success of any studio in a decade, was bookended by Joker: Folie à Dieu and The Bride, two gigantic flops that happened to be essentially the same movie: twisted romances that were also musicals, punk-rock provocations that turned out joyless and incoherent. Of the pair who birthed them, insiders are confident that, despite lighting millions of dollars on fire K Foundation style, Phillips will direct again soon. We needn’t worry about Gyllenhaal: She’s already lined up her next project, an adaptation of Rachel Kushner’s Creation Lake for Warner Bros. Even her spectacular failure was a display of power, says Fennessey. “Paul Thomas Anderson, it took him 25 years to make a movie with a $100 million budget. Maggie Gyllenhaal did it after making a modest character drama for Netflix.”
It must be nice to be Guy Ritchie. He lives in a Georgian manor house in the English countryside that he got in his divorce from Madonna, which means, I’m told, that his commitment to the everyday rigors of directing is not what it once was. Still, he created a strain of British crime film so popular that, even three decades later, he still makes a movie or two a year, albeit now for AppleTV+ and Black Bear rather than Warner Bros. and Disney.
Each had his moment as the king of action cinema, and both are still steadily working, even if their next projects — an Iran War rescue flick for Bay, a missing-kid drama in South America for Snyder — feel more like Peter Berg movies.
Plenty of extenuating circumstances for the poor returns of The Marvels and 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, and if you’ve seen the latter, you know the potential is there. It may be a while before she gets a studio gig again, but she’s reportedly already set up an indie actioner starring Mahershala Ali.
With 2024’s Conclave, he looked like a future star, able to marry prestige and commerce. The papal drama crossed the $100 million mark before winning the Adapted Screenplay Oscar. (Though not for Berger; unlike many of his peers, he doesn’t write.) After Ballad of a Small Player, he now looks like a high-level role player. If the script, performances, and crafts are top-notch, he can tie it all together. If they’re not, he can’t.
Yet to make a film that succeeds critically and commercially at the same time. (Booksmart was the former, Don’t Worry Darling the latter.) The Invite looks like it might be the one to finally do it, provided it’s not swallowed by The Odyssey. She’s not a writer, so she’ll always be at the mercy of the screenplay, but you can count on her to bring verve and style. “Strong buy rating,” says a producer.
His relationship with the Rock remains on track despite the dismal reaction to The Smashing Machine: They’re teaming up to adapt the children’s book Lizard Music. But insiders say there’s a question mark hanging over him after Marty Supreme became a huge hit. Why would you make a movie with Benny and not his brother?
“Congratulations, You’re Preapproved for Your Next A24 Movie!” Thanks to all he’s done to establish the label’s house style, I’m told, Aster has built up a lot of credit within 1245 Broadway. But after two big underperformers in a row in Eddington and Beau Is Afraid, he’s unlikely to make the same leap to a major studio as some of his peers.
Never got into the Academy’s good graces the way it seemed like he might after Call Me by Your Name, and after being market-corrected by Saltburn provocateur Emerald Fennell as Hollywood’s favorite sensualist, he made the curious decision to become a director-for-hire. Still, he works a ton and remains attractive for big-name talent like Julia Roberts and Andrew Garfield (the latter of whom headlines his star-crossed Sam Altman biopic). Which, alongside his seemingly automatic entry to the Venice-competition lineup, counts for a lot.
He works so much it’s hard to put any sort of narrative around his career, but every time you think he’s done, he goes and turns Glen Powell into a movie star or Blue Moon into an Oscar nominee. We’ll see in 15 years or so how his Merrily We Roll Along is turning out.
At a time when Gen Z is obsessed with “yearning,” she’s doing her part to ensure that romance has a place in the theatrical landscape. (Every now and then I have to head to BoxOffice Mojo and confirm that Materialists made $100 million worldwide.) She’ll write the screenplay for the My Best Friend’s Wedding sequel, though reportedly will not direct.
He’ll never be the one studios look to for another Tron movie, but even the paragon of indie authenticity is taking a modest step up in scale post-Anora, doing an Italian sex comedy for Warner Bros.’ newly created art-house imprint, Clockwork.
What a strange career — from making Moonlight, one of the greatest films of the century, to doing an animated Lion King prequel. Mufasa was a huge hit, but how much credit does he get for that? There seems to have been some agita about what his follow-up would be, but he finally found it: a Ronnie Spector biopic with Zendaya. It sounds like another for-hire gig, but whatever gets him back working with human actors again.
Lee has transcended the world of film to become a bona fide cultural icon. If you asked a random person on the street to name five directors, there’s a good chance he’d be among them. Last year’s Highest 2 Lowest marked a sharp drop-off in quality from his earlier collaborations with Denzel Washington, yet Spike’s name still mattered enough to merit a Cannes premiere.
Like Quentin Tarantino, Lee hasn’t released a movie since 2019. His last two films, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk and Gemini Man saw him seemingly more concerned with frame rates than people. He’s here on the back of his two Best Director Oscars — no one alive has more — as well as the fact that he remains actively working in film. His next, a Gold Rush tale called Gold Mountain, is currently shooting in California.
Two funnymen who parlayed TV success in the ’90s into successful careers as comedy auteurs in the aughts. Both suffered from the decline of the feature-length comedy, which brought a fallow period. (“I don’t understand where a Judd Apatow movie fits in now,” says a producer.) And both hitched their wagon to Glen Powell to arrest the slide. The Running Man did not work out for Wright; we’ll see how well The Comeback King, about a failed country-music singer, does for Apatow when it arrives in February.
Her output has slowed way down, and it’s not lost on people that she had to go to a streaming platform for her last film. Still, she was enough of a get for Netflix that it made A House of Dynamite one of the centerpieces of its fall 2025 Oscar campaign slate.
After one of the steepest declines in Hollywood history, he got his mojo back with Wednesday and cemented the comeback with Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, which grossed $452 million despite not having a screenplay.
The middle-class man’s Zach Cregger (scroll down for him): Both made appearances in teen comedies of the aughts before reinventing themselves as horror auteurs. Longlegs remains distributor Neon’s highest-grossing film at the domestic box office, though the follow-ups haven’t caught fire in the same way.
Unfortunately for these Australian YouTubers, Talk to Me came out four years too early to get them lumped in with Curry Barker and Kane Parsons in the minds of 50-something executives. Still, they have an impressive following: 7 million, in fact.
His Smile movies grossed over $350 million, and now he’s taking the incredibly ambitious next step of doing a Possession remake with Margaret Qualley, Callum Turner, and Paul Dano. If Finn comes in with a script, I’m told he’ll be taken seriously.
Toggles between big-budget work-for-hire like Doctor Strange and The Gorge and his first love, horror, where he’s successfully rebranded as the man behind the thriving Black Phone series, with two films in the can. Ethan Hawke wants to do a third.
Whether or not the general public knows who these guys are, inside Hollywood they’re considered eminently hirable. Edwards is the current steward of the Jurassic franchise, which operates as a reintegration center for wayward directors. Hess won the game of Minecraft musical chairs (Shawn Levy and Rob McElhenney were previously attached to direct) to the tune of a near-billion-dollar gross. Trachtenberg brought his own spin to the Predator franchise, while Wingard proved a steady hand on Legendary’s MonsterVerse. Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett get an edge from having done it twice: Not only did they successfully revive Scream; they also made Ready or Not into a thing. (They just got hired for the Mummy legacy sequel.) Leading the pack is Lawrence, keeper of the Hunger Games flame for over a decade.
The former stuntmen who birthed John Wick. After the first one, Stahelski shepherded the franchise to maturity, while Leitch split off to establish his own brand of muscular, stunt-heavy extravaganzas like The Fall Guy. No one is happier about the introduction of a Best Stunts Oscar than these two.
He’s in the billion-dollar club with two different franchises, to say nothing of his horror empire: Saw, The Conjuring, Insidious, and their associated spinoffs. That makes him a good illustration of Hollywood’s hidden class system: You’d give him Aquaman or a Fast and Furious movie but never Batman. Would be much higher if the producing-to-directing ratio was skewed more toward the latter.
“M. Night was going to be Spielberg, and now it feels like Jordan Peele became M. Night,” says a producer. After a dramatic rise, and equally dramatic fall, Shyamalan has settled into a comfortable equilibrium self-funding his suspense flicks. For distributors, they’re a low-risk proposition for filling out a summer slate. “If he’s doing a crazy thriller bang-for-the-buck thing, and you’re Lionsgate or Universal, you’re like, All right, let’s do it,” says the producer.
He is the most director, full stop, with over a dozen films this decade alone. Reviews have never been kind, and since he’s fled to streaming, we’ll never know if the box office would have held up post-pandemic. (Though given that Netflix re-upped his deal in 2024, it seems his audience remains loyal.) From the beginning of his career, he has prioritized ownership, a bet that has given him a level of autonomy unique in the business: Not only does Perry own and self-finance all of his films; he is also the rare director who owns his own studio lot, a former Confederate base in Atlanta.
Going out on a limb here, as many insiders believe Jordan hasn’t yet proved himself on the basis of Creed III. They argue, quite reasonably, that slotting into a franchise is different from doing an original. But here’s how I see it: The Oscar win has given MBJ a jolt of cachet, which he looks likely to parlay into establishing himself as a dual threat. “He’s got the prestige, plus he’s after the commercial,” a producer says. And Amazon handing him the reins of a tony property like The Thomas Crown Affair — a decision it made before Sinners became a hit — seems like a major vote of confidence.
Say what you will about Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness; at least it accomplished the mission of bringing Raimi back from the dead. (Hey, just like in the movies!) 2026’s survival thriller Send Help proved he’s still got something left in the tank, legging out to $94 million thanks to great word of mouth. You could argue his signature blend of horror and comedy has directly inspired the genre’s resurgence over the past ten years.
His work on the Quiet Place franchise (three films with a fourth on its way) has earned him respect as a top action filmmaker, though his unsuccessful attempt to expand his horizons with the Ryan Reynolds-starring If leaves him somewhat diminished.
She makes big, mainstream hits that are always a little better than they have to be. (For an illustration, see the difference between The Old Guard, which she directed, and The Old Guard 2, which she did not.) And for the most part “she’s done it without IP,” an executive says — though that will change with her next one, an adaptation of the YA fantasy novel Children of Blood and Bone.
The mastermind of the Paddington series, King is the unlikely answer to the question, “What would happen if you mixed Richard Curtis and Jon M. Chu?” He jumped ship for Wonka over Paddington 3, which seems to have worked out. Next up: a Fred Astaire biopic with Tom Holland.
A recent New Yorker story made the case for Fuqua as an unheralded pro who invests genre work with musicality and momentum. Outside the Equalizer trilogy, his filmography had been hit or miss … until Michael made a billion dollars and put him on the upswing again.
Unlike most big-name comedy directors, Feig maintains a regular supply of hits, most recently 2025’s The Housemaid. Also unlike most big-name comedy directors, he doesn’t shy away from what used to be known as “women’s pictures.” I wonder if those two facts are connected.
“He’s done well for A24,” a producer notes. One of the crown jewels of the indie studio’s pivot to more commercial fare, Civil War was turned by Garland into one of its highest-grossing films, and he’ll next tackle the video-game adaptation Elden Ring for the studio. He also gets a boost from being the co-pilot on Sony’s 28 Years Later films, writing the script for three installments.
The appeal of his brand of zaniness wore off by his second Thor movie. Still, he was able to get Jenna Ortega for his upcoming Ishiguro adaptation, Klara and the Sun, which, though I have no inside knowledge, looks destined to premiere at this year’s TIFF. “He’s a genius, but he’s kind of insane,” says a producer. “He’s in that class of people where you’re like, Oh, so the Met Gala was the goal?”
After becoming the youngest-ever Best Director winner, he turned in one mild disappointment, First Man, then the megabomb Babylon. Many — including Chazelle himself — worried that film had landed him in director jail, but those fears proved unfounded. “You might not get a monster raise” for signing him, an agent says, but “studios still want to make Damien Chazelle movies.” As proof, he just wrapped a film for Paramount with Daniel Craig and Cillian Murphy. (Coincidentally, it’s a prison drama.)
An idiosyncratic auteur who could be a lot higher on this list if he wanted to; I’m told that studios still chase him. But a traditional career path doesn’t appear to interest Soderbergh as much as doing whatever the hell he wants, whether that’s shooting movies on phones, telling a ghost story from the perspective of a ghost, or releasing three feature films in a single calendar year. That may make him “marginal,” as one agent put it, but going off the beaten path is its own form of power.
Actual Irish people get upset if you call him Irish. (He was born and raised in London.) But with films like In Bruges and The Banshees of Inisherin, he’s carved out a reliable lane that heads straight for Oscar’s Best Original Screenplay category. “He shows up, you’re like, This shit’s getting nominated,” says a producer.
After switching gears from Will Ferrell comedies to Oscar-nominated dramedies, his “politics seem to have subsumed everything else,” says an agent. However, he may be ready to move on. McKay was once rumored to be directing an adaptation of the climate-change tome The Uninhabitable Earth (based on a New York story). Now it appears his next film is a mysterious “sci-fi comedy.”
How many different careers has Branagh had? In the ’80s and ’90s, he was Mr. Shakespeare. In the early 2010s, he had a stint in the IP trenches with Thor and Cinderella. He successfully revived the Hercule Poirot series onscreen, which he doesn’t get enough credit for. In between, he won an Oscar for Belfast. Through it all, his love of Dutch angles has remained undimmed.
Came out of the gate incredibly strong with A Star Is Born, then Maestro was his version of the “difficult second album.” He seemed to downshift with Is This Thing On? purely to clear out the cobwebs. I’m not sure what to make of him taking over the Oceans prequel from Lee Isaac Chung, though I suppose it’s a clever way to stave off the “He’s thirsty for an Oscar” narrative.
“I actually think he’s a better director than actor,” says a rep. That said, because he works regularly with an A-list movie star who is also named Ben Affleck, “he gets slightly more benefit of the doubt than other people,” an agent says. Just don’t expect him to try to repeat his Argo Oscar success — now that he’s got his own company, Artists Equity, to support, he’s skewing a little more commercial. Ranked above Cooper owing to the Best Picture win as well as (my) optimism about his upcoming political thriller, Animals.
When he works with screenwriter Tony McNamara, as he did on The Favourite and Poor Things, he’s our most reliable 50/40/90 guy. (At least $50 million overseas, $40 million domestic, 90 percent RT rating.) Anyone else and regular moviegoers lose interest, though his long-standing partnership with Emma Stone ensures that the Academy never will.
Neither the first nor the last director to be swallowed up by the Marvel machine, though at least she rebounded with Hamnet. In a way, she’s a victim of timing — her career peak, Nomadland’s Best Picture win, happened in the COVID year nobody wants to revisit — and your mileage may vary on the woo-woo stuff like on-set dream meditations and pre-screening breathing exercises. Still, what a ride it’s been for a filmmaker who once seemed like her ceiling was a perennial indie-award nominee.
The process of making an animated film is such a different beast that it’s hard to compare these three to their live-action counterparts. Nevertheless, they merit inclusion. “When these movies work, they make a billion,” says an executive. As Pixar chieftain, Docter is the only one who never tried to make the leap to live action. (You can tell how well that went for the other two based on the fact that they have since returned to animation.) Stanton is one of the guiding hands of the Toy Story franchise and directed this summer’s fifth installment. Bird flew the Pixar coop in order to strike out on his own, but his track record is such that when he comes in with an animated film — such as the upcoming Ray Gunn for Netflix — it’s an automatic green light.
A master technician with two Best Picture nominees on his CV in F1 and Top Gun: Maverick, though he’s generally considered to require help from his collaborators to nail the emotional side of Hollywood storytelling. On the plus side, “he’s the cheapest of these guys,” a producer says.
The Mission: Impossible maestro is admired for his skill as a screenwriter. (In a past life, he won an Oscar for The Usual Suspects.) The question remains whether he can do it without Tom Cruise, with whom he’s said to share an uncanny mind-meld, but he’s reportedly shopping a Battlefield movie with Michael B. Jordan.
Few directors have been well served by the Star Wars universe, so the mess from The Mandalorian and Grogu (beaten in its second weekend by the low-budget horror film Obsession) hasn’t stuck to him. Favreau remains trusted for his consistency as well as his track record working in different types of projects. He kicked off the MCU with Iron Man, experimented with photorealistic CGI on The Jungle Book, and can do comedies like Elf. If he’s involved, I’ve heard, it’s a “go” picture.
Not especially well liked as personalities. There was considerable Schadenfreude among those I spoke to regarding their return to the Marvel fold after making duds The Gray Man and The Electric State for Netflix. And they’re expensive: I’m told you’ve got to pay the Avengers tax. Nevertheless, the box-office numbers for those MCU movies speak for themselves.
The closest thing to an auteur in this tier, negotiating creative autonomy before signing on for The Batman. “If this is the ‘undeniable box-office’ group, I think Matt Reeves is better than that,” a producer argues. (Another disagrees, seeing him as J.J. Abrams Lite.) Reeves was apparently dealing with something in his private life that delayed the Batman sequel, but the film is finally in production. Let’s see if the pattern of every second Batman movie being better than the first holds true.
Alongside Kosinski, the only name in this commerce-focused bunch who’s helmed a Best Picture nominee. Insiders appreciate the fact that he’s not just a mercenary but someone who actually brings his own vision. (And that vision … is dance!) The grab bag of projects he’s attached to is wild: a Britney Spears biopic, an animated version of Dr. Seuss’s Oh the Places You’ll Go, and a live-action Hot Wheels movie. “I don’t think David Ellison’s chasing the Russo brothers, but he gave Jon Chu a deal,” a producer notes.
Among the pool of directors who handle big, expensive franchise films, Levy stands out as the most respected inside the industry. Even those who didn’t care for Deadpool and Wolverine (“An abomination,” says one producer) call him the complete package: capable of handling big-budget spectacle while his acting background gives him a facility with emotion unique for a tentpole filmmaker. “He’s the guy that people go to because they’re trying to figure out how to save Hollywood,” says a rep.
From the POV of a studio executive, Mann has three strikes against him: He’s difficult to work with, his movies are expensive, and, as the cherry on top, they don’t make money. But from the perspective of the large and influential cult of Mann-heads (chaired by our own Bilge Ebiri), none of that matters — and why should it? It’s not their money! Some in Hollywood were convinced Heat 2 was vaporware, but the consensus is that it’s really happening. Because it’s not just cinephiles who love Michael Mann: Stars like Leonardo DiCaprio and Christian Bale are reportedly involved, which means Mann is “going to get every penny he wants,” says an executive.
The man with the most instantly recognizable aesthetic in all of movies and the leader of an ever-growing troupe of actors who come back again and again. He’s also the master of the classic double. Like clockwork, a Wes Anderson movie costs $25 million to $30 million and makes at least $40 million. Note that he occupies a privileged position in the industry, as unlike the vast majority of filmmakers, he doesn’t need to hustle for financing: All of his films after The Darjeeling Limited have been funded by a billionaire patron, Steven Rales, who also owns the Criterion Collection and Janus Films.
Who knows what the future holds for them, but I think we’ve seen enough to confirm the brothers are better together. As a partnership, they’re American masters. Individually … well, it depends how much you like dildos. They say they’re working on their first joint effort since The Ballad of Buster Scruggs; supposedly it’s a horror film. Since the beginning, the brothers have displayed a renegade streak, though their midwestern thriftiness means they enjoy a generally productive relationship with the studios. Financially, “no one gets hurt on these movies,” a producer says. And every once in a while, you get a huge hit like True Grit.
He is, as Whit Stillman once said about James Gray, one of the smartest guys in movies. And unlike Stillman, I do mean it as a compliment. With The Witch, The Northman, and Nosferatu, he combines the mind of a history Ph.D. with the soul of a goth. But December’s Werwulf has me worrying: Though he does his thing and does it well, what happens when he runs out of monsters? Until that day comes, an Eggers film feels safe for a craft nomination or two, plus decent box office. “They find their way to $100 million,” a producer says.
After striking Oscar gold with Everything Everywhere All at Once, these kooky dudes left A24’s buzzy-director finishing school and signed a big deal with Universal. The first film from that deal is just now getting off the ground with Matt Damon set to star. “They’ve really made one movie,” says an executive figuratively. (They also did Swiss Army Man together with Scheinert adding another on his own.) “I hope to God the next one works for them.”
An anthropomorphized Online Ceramics sweatshirt, Safdie the Elder made the leap from hypebeast fave to mainstream success with Marty Supreme. The Ping-Pong drama became A24’s highest-grossing movie — until it was surpassed by Backrooms — earning Safdie his first Oscar nominations in the process. And all he had to do was cut ties with the collaborator who shares his blood! Insiders peg him as a likely candidate to graduate from A24 and get a huge budget soon.
“People will be like, ‘No, it can’t be,’” a producer says of the 20-somethings’ high placement on this list. “But it is.” You can argue that the youngsters behind Backrooms and Obsession will never be more powerful than they are at this exact moment, when every middle-aged executive in Hollywood believes they’ve got the special sauce to unlock the Gen-Z audience and will green-light whatever the hell they want to make. It’s a smart bet, says the producer: “You’re not paying them much. You don’t have to give them a huge budget. And there’s a potential that you could spike it on the ROI.” Who would you rather bet on in the long term? Parsons is schooled in design but is more tied to the specific Backrooms project. Barker has his Obsession follow-up already in the can, though you wonder if it might be more prudent to bury that one and start fresh with more resources. (Or would a higher budget ruin the magic?) For now, they’re given equal credit for opening the industry’s eyes about how to meet young viewers where they are.
As the director of the greatest screen trilogy of the 21st century, Jackson’s legend precedes him. However: There is not a lot of optimism around him making his return to feature filmmaking with a Tintin sequel. “There’s culture in 2026 and then there’s the opposite of culture in 2026,” says a producer. “This one is the opposite.” So why is he ranked so high? Because there are only a select few who could get a studio to fork over $150 millionish for Tintin, and Jackson is among them.
Yes, he’s only made two movies in the past 15 years, Gravity and Roma. But guess what? On both of those movies, he won just about every single award you can think of. (And Gravity, lest you forget, made a Nolanesque $720 million.) Four of his five eligible films made the New York Times’ “Best Movies of the 21st Century” list — the only one that missed was his Harry Potter installment, Prisoner of Azkaban, which most people think is the series’s peak. It’s an all-time great résumé, though the misfire of AppleTV’s Disclosure does muddle it a little bit. Despite the long break, Cuarón is still considered a catch: He was reportedly in the mix to take over Bond before bowing out of the race. Instead, his next project seems to be the long-gestating Jane, a magical-realist film about Philip K. Dick’s sister starring Charlize Theron.
“He makes so many movies,” says an agent. “Once in a while he has a hit, but it’s been a bit since he satisfied anybody.” Regardless, deep into his 80s he remains on the short list of names you’d let handle a $300 million tentpole like Gladiator II, and he’s proved himself enough to weather the disappointments of Exodus: Gods and Kings and The Last Duel. “If you’re a young director and you’re on your way up, you’ve got to get lucky every time,” says a producer. “If you’re an old-timer who has earned his place in Hollywood, you can take some pretty big stumbles.” Scott wields additional behind-the-scenes power as a producer: His shingle Scott Free Productions has produced titles from multiple directors on this list.
He’s an old-school entertainer the likes of which we don’t often see anymore, able to turn archival concert footage of Elvis into a razzle-dazzle Imax experience. In many ways, Luhrmann is the mirror image of Ridley Scott: He may take the better part of a decade between projects, but his batting average is better than you might think. Australia, the closest thing he has to a flop, still grossed $200 million worldwide and was granted a second life as a Hulu miniseries.
Say what you will about Abrams — that he’s “human tofu,” or “an avatar of cultural entropy” — he has been able to carve out a lucrative career alternating between hired-gun IP work and original stories sold on his name, which separates him from the Shawn Levy tier. (He also heads the production company Bad Robot, though like many others, it’s struggling in the industry downturn.) Abrams’s latest is a sci-fi film called The Great Beyond, an attractive enough proposition that Glen Powell and Jenna Ortega signed on to star.
Like Damon Albarn, he transcended his origins in the Cool Britannia scene to enjoy a career marked by restless creative energy. Boyle went from zombie-movie auteur to Oscar-winning filmmaker, then back to zombies. “He’s a good director-for-hire on something you feel pretty good about but probably rarely the reason you make a movie,” says a producer. The big exception to that is 28 Years Later movies, for which Boyle was a major selling point. After letting Nia DaCosta take the reins for The Bone Temple, he’s reuniting with Cillian Murphy for the third one.
The idea of making four separate Beatles biopics and releasing them in the same month sounds so ridiculous on its face that the fact Sony is actually doing it should be taken as a vote of confidence in Mendes’s ability to pull it off. “You know he’s going to deliver quality when you see ’em,” says a producer. However, skepticism remains around how exactly this quadrilogy will work. Some predict the Ringo movie will bypass theaters and move to streaming.
Not quite an auteur and yet more skilled than a hired gun, Mangold is afforded a great deal of respect within the industry. Like the IP guys, he works on a big canvas, but he tackles weightier subjects than they do, and besides Dial of Destiny, there isn’t a black mark on his résumé. He went from the comic-book western Logan to the racing drama Ford v Ferrari to the Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown — all hits, all Oscar-nominated. One exec pays him a high compliment: “If I’m dating a movie, and it’s going against the Daniels’s next movie, I’m like, ‘We can beat it.’ If it’s against a Mangold movie that looks commercial, I don’t want to be on that date.”
At DC, Gunn serves as the impresario of the whole slate while also personally helming the Superman movies. Last summer’s Man of Steel reboot set the tone for the Gunn era — an earnest idealism at odds with both the grimdark Zack Snyder films and the postmodern weightlessness of the MCU. The failure of Craig Gillespie’s Supergirl puts a damper on some of the optimism around Gunn’s project, but it also proves that only the man himself can pull off the James Gunn vibe. “He’ll be out of this DC thing at some point in the future, and then he’ll do something great,” says a producer.
You know what you’re getting with the Wuthering Heights director: 10 to 15 GIF-worthy shots, a handful of I-can’t-believe-she-did-that scenes, and a bought-in Gen-Z audience. And also: a clunky script, a twist that isn’t really a twist, and, inevitably, a bunch of angry people on the internet. Fortunately, the former qualities are much more important around town than the latter. “She’s got heat, and she’s certainly on her way,” an agent says.
What hath Jordan Peele and Ari Aster wrought? A landscape full of C-list “elevated horror” entries full of repetitive imagery and obvious metaphors. With Cregger, you get something different: horror that’s elevated in execution rather than theme with a former sketch comedian’s knack for tension and timing. He’s gotta watch his back for the kids coming up from behind, but after Barbarian and Weapons, Cregger has consistency on his side. Unlike the zoomer wunderkinds, he’s done it twice. “It’s early, but he feels like he’s not going to miss for a while,” says a producer. “There’s no reason to believe that Resident Evil isn’t going to be a monster hit.”
“He’s a name and a brand,” says one agent. This may be faint praise, which tracks with the sense GDT’s past few films have resonated more with the Academy’s craft branches than the public at large — a director who has retreated to the cosseted confines of the Netflix home screen. But he’s huge in the fanboy community, and he’s got the resources to follow his muse wherever it takes him. (Usually toward a sexy monster.) Del Toro’s immense personal charisma helps, too, and not just when he’s campaigning for Oscars. As more and more big directors embrace AI, he’s become a standard-bearer for the human side of film craftsmanship.
In Parasite’s sweep, he gave us one of the best Oscar moments of recent vintage. Among insiders I spoke to, he’s dinged less than you might think for Mickey 17 underperforming, perhaps because it still did pretty well internationally. (It made $87 million overseas, about as much as Sinners.) “Even his weird movies are interesting,” says a producer. “I actually think he’s interested in audiences.” He inspires enough faith that a distributor like Neon was willing to pick up his upcoming animated film about a squid, Ally. It’s expensive, and it might not work, but I’m told that with Bong, you’re more likely to wonder whether it could work.
The owner of one of the most impressive Oscar streaks: Ever since his debut, Amores Perros, every single Iñárritu film has been nominated by the Academy somewhere. Even Bardo couldn’t break it! Whether this streak holds with this fall’s Digger — the biggest movie for shovels since Andrew Davis’s Holes — Iñárritu will always be the one who coaxed Tom Cruise out of his Freudian death drive and got him to give an actual performance again.
Now that Paul Thomas Anderson’s got his trophy, Fincher is the next Greatest American Filmmaker Without an Oscar. As the archetypal megalomaniac director, his level of control is legendary, but he’s got the talent to back it up. Which is maybe why he’s been dinged less than his peers for giving a decade-plus of his career over to Netflix. It’s only natural that Fincher would follow the path of least interference. Slightly curious that his next film is a Once Upon a Time in Hollywood spinoff — the man who’s often likened to God is now playing with another auteur’s toys — but that created a directorial merry-go-round he seems likely to come out on top from. Judging by the Social Reckoning trailer, the Fincher-less sequel may paint the director’s contributions to The Social Network in an even more favorable light.
With Knives Out, Johnson pulled off the supreme directorial achievement: He made an original movie that was so beloved and successful that Netflix paid nearly half a billion dollars for the sequels. In franchise-mad Hollywood, a director who restocks the seed corn is as good as it gets. Critics love him — it helps, perhaps, that he’s married to one — and the business side does, too. Not only does Johnson create his own IP; he does it “for broad audiences,” a producer says. “That’s a rarity for filmmakers.”
What a difference a hit makes. When I first started reporting this story, Lord and Miller hadn’t directed a movie since 2014, and nobody had much to say about them. Then, after the smash success of Project Hail Mary, this long-underrated duo finally started getting their due. “They said, ‘We want to make a $200 million movie about a guy who goes to space,’” an executive says. “It’s a movie that doesn’t obviously work on paper, but they’re brilliant, and they don’t miss.” In fact, if you take out Solo — and many are happy to hand them a Star Wars mulligan — they are in the select group of having never missed, from 21 Jump Street to The LEGO Movie, to the Spider-Verse movies, which they produce and co-write. (“If I was Kevin Feige, I’d be like, ‘We fucked it,’” says a producer.) That’s a motley collection of projects, tied together by the duo’s distinct comic voice. Famously snubbed for The LEGO Movie, they may not have to wait much longer for their Oscar moment.
Having been given a limitless budget to adapt the second-most-comprehensible Thomas Pynchon novel, PTA is Oscar’s reigning man of the year. The former enfant terrible has now been firmly enshrined in the Establishment, though he remains somewhat outside the Hollywood power structure. After One Battle After Another, a downshift in scale seems inevitable. Still, “anybody who works today would kill for a PTA movie,” says a producer. “He joins up with Leo again, you’d say ‘yes’ ten out of ten times.” Another producer agrees: “You may end up holding the bag. But if I’m gonna pull the trigger on someone, PTA is a very good bet.”
Mr. Originality, the rare filmmaker of this level who starts from scratch every time. That’s a high-risk strategy, but it hasn’t failed yet, and audiences have proved willing to show up no matter where he goes. He gets extra credit from the fact that films like Us and Nope were not box-office layups; they are slippery, challenging movies that only Peele could have made hits. However, this approach leaves him more exposed than his peers to industry contractions. Following the sting of losing out on Weapons, his production company Monkeypaw has had to downsize. (The only film it’s released since 2022 was last year’s Temu Jordan Peele movie Him.) And the next project Peele himself will direct remains in limbo. His window may be shrinking, but for studios he’s “gettable” in a way the names below are not.
The original Marty Supreme and the most venerated auteur in town. All the hip young directors grew up idolizing him. Scorsese has paid them back in kind, lending his weight to the next generation as a producer, as names as varied as Ari Aster and Joanna Hogg can attest. His late period marks an interesting comparison to Steven Spielberg’s. For so long, Scorsese was the ultimate outsider, while Spielberg was the consummate insider. Now, though, it’s a tougher call who’s got more juice. Many argue it’s Scorsese: As long as the budget’s under $100 million, it’s an automatic green light. “You would’ve been a fool to count him out,” says a producer. “He’s still very viable.” Ultimately, the fact that his most recent movies are subsidized by streamers has me giving the edge to Spielberg.
“He’s made more five-star movies than anyone since John Ford,” says a producer. And still working at a high level artistically, as those of us who adore West Side Story and The Fabelmans will tell you. Yet there’s something undoubtedly bittersweet about the fact that Hollywood’s prototypical boomer, once its ever-youthful Peter Pan, is now seen by the masses as the cinematic equivalent of the ’90s Stones. Per Puck, industry researcher Kevin Goetz found that Spielberg was “universally respected as a foundational industry pioneer” among today’s teens, but they were “‘highly skeptical of his contemporary output’ and associated him with their parents.” For decades, Spielberg was the no-question No. 1 on this list, and his emeritus status gives him considerable power as the unofficial mayor of Hollywood. As a friend put it to me at the Oscars, when even Spielberg got his licks in, you knew Timothée Chalamet was cooked.
There is a sense Cameron is coming out of Avatar: Fire and Ash somewhat bruised. “I would liken it to the Vegas era of someone’s career,” says a producer. “You’re gonna go see it, it’s gonna satisfy, but is it gonna move the needle?” Thankfully, he’s now dreaming beyond Pandora for the first time in decades. In the mix: a Terminator sequel, an adaptation of the fantasy novel The Devils, and a film about the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Plus more Avatar movies, which he wants to make “in half the time for two-thirds of the cost.” (Most likely though AI VFX.) In a sense, he’s a victim of his own high standards: What is ordinary for Cameron would be extraordinary for anyone else. “If he’s making a movie, pencil it in for a billion,” says another producer.
He lost a significant amount of goodwill over the past 12 months simply by being a prick. He seems to be in his own head about stopping at ten films. But if and when QT makes another one, actors and studios will be lining up to be part of it. Before Ryan Coogler’s deal on Sinners was the Ryan Coogler deal, it was the Tarantino deal — final cut, first-dollar gross, and full ownership after a number of years. That power comes in recognition of the fact that Tarantino’s style is instantly recognizable and totally inimitable. (The most recent failed attempt being season 3 of Euphoria.) According to Goetz’s research, even with a seven-plus year gap between films, he remains the rare director who is a name brand among Gen-Z moviegoers. Insiders joke that he could make a movie about Kleenex and people would still go see it.
No other ranking got as much pushback from Hollywood insiders as putting Gerwig in the top five. To them, plenty of directors could have made a Barbie movie a hit. But who else could have made that Barbie movie — so smart, so wacky, so playful. A movie so distinctively Greta as to elide any contradictions in a former mumblecore princess crossing the billion-dollar threshold. “She’s of the moment and obviously has used the clout from Barbie to get what she wants out of Netflix,” says an agent. What she wanted was the thing every A-list director wants from the streamer but no one else gets: a commitment to a full theatrical release for Narnia, complete with 49 days of exclusivity. And she’s at least 15 years younger than most of the other directors at her level. “I don’t know that she’s reached the zenith of her power yet,” says a producer.
The stacked cast of the Dune movies nearly speaks for itself. Timmy, Zendaya, Austin Butler, Florence Pugh, Anya Taylor-Joy, and now Robert Pattinson — all of them flocked at the chance to join Villeneuve in the desert. If there is a knock against the Quebecois, it’s that his biggest hits have all been IP-based. “Would you give him any property? Absolutely. But that’s not the same as selling tickets on his own,” says an agent. Counterpoint: Not many others could have gotten Arrival to $200 million. He reportedly gave up final cut on his forthcoming Bond movie, though not everyone believes this. “I promise you he practically has it,” an exec says. Even if true, I’ve also heard insiders describe that as a point in his favor. Villeneuve’s power comes from his willingness to play the game by Hollywood’s rules while still retaining his distinctive stamp.
Back in the 2010s, it seemed like there was only one career path available for young filmmakers: make a buzzy Sundance movie, then sign your life away to a cinematic universe. Colin Trevorrow, Jordan Vogt-Roberts, Jon Watts — some of these guys went onto nice careers, others disappeared. Out of all of them, Coogler stands alone. “He’s in rarified space, and deservedly so,” says a producer. Since making the jump to studio filmmaking with Creed, “he’s never missed,” one agent put it to me. With apologies to J.J. Abrams, here is the true heir to Spielberg, a filmmaker who blends thematic heft with a populist approach. Like Spielberg, he is an ambassador for the craft: Coogler’s video explaining the different film formats Sinners was playing in has been widely credited as a factor in its boffo box office, cementing his reputation as a passionate pitchman able to translate film-nerd details to the general audience. This wasn’t his year at the Oscars, but based on current trajectory, it will be soon.
Not once in any of my conversations for this list did anyone suggest that somebody besides Christopher Nolan deserved the No. 1 spot. The only debate was whether Nolan should sit atop the Coogler-Villeneuve tier or be given his own. “He is in a class by himself,” says a producer. “There’s nobody like him. He’s never lost momentum, never struggled, never stumbled.” Nolan offers prestige and populism, intellectual oomph and global appeal — he wants his movies to be as big as possible. For the decade and a half between The Dark Knight Rises and The Odyssey, he did it entirely with originals, turning the evacuation of Dunkirk and the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer into massive, Oscar-winning hits solely on the strength of his name. All this means he doesn’t come cheap for a studio — for Oppenheimer, he reportedly received 15 percent of the film’s gross earnings — but given the guaranteed critical and commercial success, it’s a price Hollywood is happy to pay.
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