Looking through different Oscar trivia, this one strikes me as quite terrific. 12 nominations for Best Director! The closest to his total is Billy Wilder and that with "only" eight nominations. He's pretty much the Meryl Streep of directing.

Of the still living and working directors the closest to him are:

1. Woody Allen - 6
2. Martin Scorsese - 6
3. Steven Spielberg - 6
4. Francis Ford Coppola - 4
5. Sidney Lumet - 4
6. Mike Nichols - 4
7. Peter Weir - 4
8. Clint Eastwood - 4

All the others have less than four. Of the eight above, I don't see anyone getting even close to Wyler. They're simply getting to old. Scorsese and Spielberg certainly have some nominations in them left, but I don't see either getting more than eight in total. Weir might snatch some more too, but not enough.

At this point the likely contenders are actually (like it or not) Stephen Daldry who's 3/3 (a Best Director nom for each of his films so far) and Jason Reitman (two nomiations at the age of 32 already!). What helps is that both seem to be very keen on directing Oscar fare. But even they probably won't make it this far.

And a second interesting question to ponder:

What's harder to beat? Wyler's 12 nominations or John Ford's four (!) wins for Best Director?

When I think that both of these are extremely hard to beat I think that John Ford's four wins is the more difficult to beat

So why are you missing Ford with his 5 noms in the above chart?

Because Ford is neither alive nor working.

LOL. I somehow understood it was a definitive list.

Now that the Academy is nominating 10 films again I would think the 4 wins for BD would be more difficult to achieve. If it were still 5 films then I'd give the edge to the 12 nods.