| Saturn Award for Best Director | |
| Awarded For: | Best directing of the year for a genre film |
| Presenter: | Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films |
| Country: | United States |
| Year: | 1974/1975 |
| Holder: | James Cameron for (2022/2023) |
The Saturn Award for Best Director (or Saturn Award for Best Direction) is one of the annual awards given by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films. The Saturn Awards, which are the oldest film-specialized awards to reward genre fiction achievements, in particular for science fiction, fantasy, and horror (the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation is the oldest award for science fiction and fantasy films), included the Best Director category for the first time at the 3rd Saturn Awards, for the 1974/1975 film years.[1]
The award is also the oldest to honor film directors in science fiction, fantasy and horror. It has been given 36 times, including a tie for the 1977 film year.
James Cameron holds the record of the most wins with six (for seven nominations), while Steven Spielberg is the most nominated director with fourteen nominations (for four wins). Only three other directors have won the award more than once: Peter Jackson (three times), Bryan Singer and Ridley Scott (two times). As of 2024, Cameron is the only director to have won the award two years in a row (having won at both the 17th and 18th ceremonies for The Abyss and , respectively). At the 22nd Saturn Awards, Kathryn Bigelow became the first woman to win the award, and is one of three female directors to win the award (the others being Lana and Lily Wachowski). Roland Emmerich became the first of four LGBTQ person to win the award at the 23rd ceremony (the others being the Wachowskis and Singer), while John Woo became the first person of Asian descent to win the award at the 24th ceremony and Ryan Coogler became the first African-American to win the award at the 44th ceremony.
| width=7% | Year | width=31% | Director | width=31% | Film |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1974/1975 (3rd) | Mel Brooks | Young Frankenstein | |||
| 1976 (4th) | Dan Curtis | Burnt Offerings | |||
| 1977 (5th) | George Lucas | Star Wars | |||
| Steven Spielberg | Close Encounters of the Third Kind | ||||
| Nicolas Gessner | The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane | ||||
| Carl Reiner | Oh, God! | ||||
| Don Taylor | The Island of Dr. Moreau | ||||
| 1978 (6th) | Philip Kaufman | Invasion of the Body Snatchers | |||
| Warren Beatty and Buck Henry | Heaven Can Wait | ||||
| Richard Donner | Superman | ||||
| Robin Hardy | The Wicker Man | ||||
| Franklin J. Schaffner | The Boys from Brazil | ||||
| 1979 (7th) | Ridley Scott | Alien | |||
| John Badham | Dracula | ||||
| Nicholas Meyer | Time After Time | ||||
| Peter Weir | The Last Wave | ||||
| Robert Wise |